The Lovers E-Book

Vendela Vida

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

'I missed a train stop twice on the same journey while reading it. That's how distractingly good it is.' -- Viv Groskop, Independent on Sunday Yvonne is newly widowed, her children grown. Hoping to revisit memories of a happier time, she travels to Turkey. Despite the sand and sea, Yvonne's memories of her past are overwhelming and she clings to a newfound friendship with Ahmet, a local boy who makes his living as a shell collector. With Ahmet as her guide, Yvonne finally begins to enjoy the shimmering waters and relaxed pace of the Turkish coast. But when a devastating accident suddenly upends her hard-won peace, she finds her life thrown into chaos and with it her fragile sense of belonging.

Leseprobe

The Lovers

The Lovers

Vendela Vida

First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

First published in hardback and export and airside trade paperback in Great Britain in 2011 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Vendela Vida 2010

The moral right of Vendela Vida to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 184887 520 3eBook ISBN: 978 085789 505 9Export and Airside Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 184887 527 2

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic BooksAn Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House26–27 Boswell Street LondonWC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Lovers

Chapter

Acknowledgments

The Lovers

When half an hour had passed and there was still no sign of a white Renault, Yvonne began to fear she’d been scammed. Her flight from Istanbul was the last of the day, and the small Dalaman airport was beginning to empty. She stood outside, under a pink-veined sky, looking for anybody who appeared to be looking for her. There was no one but taxi drivers announcing, “I take you,” or miming the equivalent. She reentered the terminal, hoping she’d missed seeing Mr. Çelik’s employee, who, she’d been told, would be holding a piece of paper bearing her name. But the only visible sign was a large poster on the wall: TURKEY—WHERE EAST MEETS WEST. On the poster two figures, each holding a briefcase, were walking toward each other on a bridge.

She opened her laptop to consult her last e-mail from Mr. Çelik, and immediately regretted it. A pair of young men in tracksuits were staring at her. Now a woman pushing a mop was also looking her way. Peter would have disapproved; they had traveled to nine—ten? no, eleven—countries during their twenty-six years of marriage, and he had been proud of their ability to go unnoticed. This was her first trip since his death, and already she was breaking their rules.

The laptop had been a present from her son and his fiancée, and Yvonne was sorry she’d brought it. She was sorry she owned it. She carried it with her into the ladies’ restroom, where, alone, she propped it on the sink counter. She was troubled to discover she was not mistaken: Mr. Çelik had last written to say she would be picked up by one of his employees at 19:30, on the fifteenth of June, outside the Dalaman airport, and be driven to the house in Datça. His e-mail also confirmed he had received the thousand-dollar deposit she’d wired into his account. A thousand dollars! What a fool she’d been to wire so much money to secure a vacation home she’d seen only on a website. She carefully wrote down Ali Çelik’s phone number on the back of her boarding pass, slipped her computer into her bag, and left the restroom. There was no pay phone in sight.

Outside in the shadeless parking lot, the heat felt thick, as though it had been compacted by the hours of the day. Not wanting to offend conservative Turks, she had flown in a loose, long-sleeved blouse and a skirt that reached beneath her calves—an outfit she had discovered was both stifling and unnecessary. No one on the plane from Istanbul wore a head scarf. The Turkish women, most of them young and wealthy, were dressed in jeans and sequined T-shirts and high-heeled sandals. The rest of the seats were occupied by British post-grads in sundresses, Turkish men in long shorts, and Norwegian girls with tight bright shirts and nondescript boyfriends.

By the parking lot there was a narrow café and newspaper kiosk, where Yvonne asked the cashier if she could make a call. She showed him the number and he pulled a black phone out from behind the bar and dialed for her. A small act of mercy—she didn’t know which numbers to leave off the long row of digits.

She was surprised when a voice answered.

“Mr. Çelik?” she said.

“Oh good, it’s you,” he said. His accent was negligible.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said.

“My man has been looking for you!” Mr. Çelik said. “Where are you?”

“Just outside the airport. At the café.”

“You came out on the wrong side of the airport.”

“There’s another side?” she asked. “I’ll walk over there.”

“Please. No. You stay there. I’ll call and have him come around.”

“Thank you,” she said. He had hung up. “Thank you,” she said again, and laughed with the pleasure of relief. She had not been scammed. She was not a fool.

From the plane, Yvonne had been mesmerized by the Mediterranean, its texture like chiffon. It reminded her of a play her twins had been in when they were young. Aurelia and Matthew had each held one end of a large swath of blue iridescent material, and alternated lifting and lowering it with their tiny hands. The play was called The Ocean.

Now, as she stood in front of the café, Yvonne couldn’t see the water, but she could taste the salt in the air. A white car sped up and stopped, and not one but two men, one tall, the other taller, emerged. They looked too big for the small car.

“Hello!” she said, as though she was the one welcoming them to her country. Both men nodded.

The driver lifted her suitcase from her side and placed it in the backseat. He ceremoniously held the door open for her and she slid inside. The seat was warm and sticky.

“There are two of you,” she said.

“He doesn’t speak English, so I am here to translate,” explained the man in the passenger seat. “He work for Mr. Ali Çelik. His name is Mehmet.”

Yvonne asked the interpreter what his name was, and when she couldn’t understand his response, she asked again, and then gave up. “How long is the drive?” she said instead.

“Three hours, maybe not so much. They remake the roads, so maybe longer or smaller. We stop for coffee.”

The car started. The men spoke to each other and laughed and Yvonne sat in the back, next to Peter’s old Samsonite. This was her companion now.

Through the window Yvonne saw rows of squat palm trees and turquoise minarets. The car slowed through the town of Marmaris and passed by an endless strip of bars, many with British flags and sunburned, sandaled tourists sitting outside, drinking beer from narrow glasses.

After Marmaris there were short stretches when water was visible, until the sun, which had been making a drawn-out exit, finally dropped. Then, only shapes, sounds—the occasional house, a barking dog. Yvonne and the two men moved quickly: the moment they reached something they left it behind. She was having difficulty understanding how the trip could take even two hours at the speed they were traveling, but suddenly, after passing no particular town or landmark, the road was unpaved, and she could feel every bump, every kilometer. “We are on Datça peninsula now,” the man in the passenger seat said, turning his dented chin in her direction. “Datça the town is near the end.”

Yvonne nodded into the sepia darkness.

Soon after, the car pulled into a lit and landscaped area, a restaurant with only outdoor seating. The men ordered coffee and Yvonne ordered an orange Fanta.

“How do you say thank you?” she asked the interpreter as they walked to a table.

“Simplest way for you is tea and sugar. That’s what sounds like. Tea and sugar.”

“Tea and sugar?” said Yvonne.

“You are welcome,” he said, and laughed.

They sat at a picnic table near a short bridge that spanned a small pond. Around them, at other tables, round and square, sat couples on dates and large groups of men laughing and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. The scent was both aged and ripe.

Mehmet said something and his friend translated: “Mr. Çelik is a very powerful man.”

Yvonne shrugged. “I don’t know much about him.”

They looked at her, as though wondering how it was possible that she was unaware of Mr. Çelik’s power.

“What do you know about Turkey?” Mehmet said.

“Well, a few things,” she said. “I know it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world.”

Mehmet’s friend smiled and translated her words. Mehmet nodded. In her travels, Yvonne had yet to meet anyone, in any country, who argued with the assessment that their country was among the most beautiful.

“What else?”

“I know that Turkey hasn’t been allowed into the EU.”

Mehmet understood EU and he and his friend began a private discussion that seemed to escalate into an argument.

“Sorry,” Yvonne said.

“It’s okay,” the interpreter said. “We just don’t agree. I think that if EU doesn’t want us, then fuck EU. But Mehmet, he thinks Turkey needs to look at its past. He thinks Turkey needs to be truthful about its history.”

The men continued their heated discussion in Turkish. Yvonne thought she heard Armenia, but she couldn’t be certain. The interpreter seemed to be finding English more difficult as his frustration grew, and his attempts to include her in their conversation dwindled.

The exclusion was a relief. Yvonne pulled up the sleeves of her blouse and tucked her skirt between her knees so the warm air could touch her skin. She was enjoying the role of being the observer rather than the observed. It was only now, while sitting at this roadside restaurant on the Datça peninsula, that she fully comprehended the claustrophobia she’d experienced for the past two years. She had been under surveillance, in the way that was particular to new widows. The faculty at her high school, her students, her neighbors, the dry cleaner, the clerks at the video store—especially the clerks—had all been watching her. “How are you?” was no longer a casual question, for an ambivalent response from Yvonne could inspire gossip, which in turn triggered unsolicited phone calls and concerned visits.

Recently, whenever she was asked how she was spending a weekend, she had resorted to lying, claiming her kids or some unnamed cousins were coming to visit, so no one would be aware she was passing the time alone. Burlington, Vermont, her home for half her life—the married half—had become a dollhouse, the fourth wall removed, the vacated and cluttered rooms of her solitary existence visible for all to see. Why had she waited so long to get away?

Exhaustion hit her on the second leg of the drive, but the unpaved road prevented her from sleeping. Each time she was on the cusp, a turn or bump jostled her awake. By the time they approached Datça, the idea of rest had been shaken from her body, and her head felt hollowly alert. She recognized the sensation from her jet-lagged adventures with Peter, and, more recently, from the jagged sleep cycles that had consumed her after the funeral. Those months of nights when she would finally, exhausted of tears, fall into a sleep so deep that when she awoke, she would blink in the light, drunk with the possibility of a new day, until only a minute later the reality—Peter had been killed and was gone— tightened around her again.

Once they were in Datça, Mehmet turned and drove straight uphill for ten blocks. He stopped the car in front of a white house. Yvonne recognized its shape, though the staircase was imposing, much larger than it had looked in the photos. The stairs sullied the house’s appearance like bad teeth in a wide smile. As she stepped out of the car, Yvonne could see the outline of flowers that covered the entranceway. She knew from the pictures they were purple. Bougainvillea.

Yvonne followed Mehmet up the steep set of stairs while the interpreter followed behind with her suitcase and bag. The front door opened into a tiled foyer, with a dining room and kitchen to the left, and a living room to the right. The decor was white and black with red, blue, and yellow accents. A Mondrian palette. A large red steel staircase, like a structure at a children’s playground, spiraled upward and down. She had come to Turkey, land of ruins and antiquity, to stay in a modern home.

With brisk steps, the men ventured around the house. The lights turned themselves on as they entered each room. At first Yvonne thought her escorts were confirming no one was in the house, but then she understood their instincts were less protective: they were curious. Mr. Çelik was a wealthy man—their boss—and Yvonne guessed this was their first time inside his home unsupervised.

“Where does Mr. Çelik go when he rents this place?” Yvonne asked. She had stepped down into the living room, which contained a large TV, a zebra-skin rug, a blue leather couch, and, behind a locked glass case, a display of old rifles.

“He has many houses. Now he stays at his winery house,” the interpreter explained. He and Mehmet were standing in front of the rifle display. Yvonne could tell they were speaking to each other about Mr. Çelik’s collection with admiration and not an insignificant amount of envy.

The interpreter carried her suitcase up the red spiral stairs. “What room?” he called down.

“The master one, I guess,” Yvonne said. “The big one,” she added.

“You are alone,” he said when he came down.

“I’m waiting for my family.” Her explanation was promptly translated for Mehmet. Both men nodded. It wasn’t completely a lie, but as with many untruths, it made everyone feel more comfortable.

She was handed the keys to the house and to the car— Mr. Çelik had arranged for that as well. When she’d informed him she was considering renting a car from the agency at the airport, he’d promptly e-mailed her back, saying, “Don’t waste your money. I know people.”

Yvonne tipped Mehmet and his friend. “Tea and sugar,” she said. They seemed pleased. She inquired how they’d be getting down the hill—as a teacher and a mother, she constantly worried about how people would get home—and the interpreter pointed to another car they had apparently parked at the house earlier. She nodded, smiled, and said good-bye. As she closed the front door behind them, she tried to inhale the fragrance of the flowers before she remembered bougainvillea had no scent.

Now she was able to explore the house on her own. She climbed the staircase to the second floor. In the center of the landing was the entrance to a large bathroom, with a shower curtain patterned with green frogs and a shelf stacked with colorful beach towels. At the back of the house were two small bedrooms, one with twin beds, the other with a single bed and an ironing board standing on its insectlike legs.

Her suitcase had been placed in the largest room, in the front of the house. The bed was covered with a thin yellow bedspread, and one wall was lined with books. Yvonne pulled back the curtains, which reminded her of a crochet dress one of her sisters had owned in grade school. She pressed her face to the glass. At the bottom of the hill lay the ocean, silent and still.

The third floor was smaller, with only a single bedroom and a balcony. On top of the bed, a piece of exercise equipment, complete with black straps and silver chains, had been laid out. Yvonne couldn’t identify its purpose.

She descended the staircase three floors until she was in the basement. Even with the light on, it was a dim place, full of odd tables and lamps and with a couch in the center of the room. She had ventured only a few feet from the stairs when, wary of the automatic lights that might snap off, she returned to the main floor.

By the front door sat a wooden bin, like a small boat, containing an assortment of women’s shoes. She removed her own and tried on a pair of black sandals with short heels. Her size. They were more fashionable than the shoes she was accustomed to—Callie, her son’s fiancée, would have approved—and she placed her own practical shoes in the bin. She walked around, enjoying the sound the sandals made on the tile floor. The sound of elegance, she thought. The sound of a woman preparing for a party.

The kitchen was surgical in its sparseness, the counters bare but for an unlabeled bottle of red wine. A note was propped up against the bottle: “From my vineyard. Enjoy!” There were faces on the refrigerator door, photos of people on a yacht—all of them in their twenties and thirties, all with drinks. Which one was Mr. Ali Çelik? Which of the beautiful women was his wife? The magnets securing the photos in place read CARPE DIEM! and A MAN’S WEALTH IS MEASURED BY THE AMOUNT OF FUN HE HAS!

Yvonne opened the refrigerator. Cherries glistened inside a silver strainer. She tried one, and then another. She removed the strainer and carried it to the living room, along with a napkin and a small bowl for the pits. She had underestimated her hunger.

From the couch, she couldn’t see anything outside the window—only her own reflection. A brunette woman with pale skin and dark eyes removing pits from her mouth. At first glance, she looked younger than her fifty-three years. She tried not to be vain about this, but she was not un-proud. She had put on weight since Peter’s death, and the extra pounds had filled in her wrinkles, her breasts, her hips. She stood and walked closer to the window so she could see herself better, and then, wondering if the neighbors across the street could see her too, she took a quick step back and retreated to the kitchen.

It had been extravagant to rent such a large house, but it had been the only appealing one available when, two months before, she had decided to make the trip. Her son, Matthew, had invited her to join him and Callie and Callie’s family on the boat they were chartering from Greece to Turkey. “A pre-wedding cruise,” he called it in his initial e-mail to Yvonne. Yvonne had never heard of such a thing, but she had never heard of many things Callie’s family, the Campbells, were accustomed to. Having been overly impressed by wealth when she was young, Yvonne now tried to keep a safe distance from people with money.

“We’ll stop at EVERY archaeological site all the way until we get to Troy. You’ll LOVE it, Mom,” Matthew wrote. Even his capital letters seemed pleading, anxious. It had taken Yvonne a moment to understand he was appealing to her presumed interest in history, the subject she had taught for thirty years. Matthew, though well-meaning, understood her on a superficial level. Was that fair? she wondered. Mother, teacher, historian, wife. Widow. He did not look beyond these terms, these roles. But Yvonne had not done so with her own mother either.

“I’ll think about it,” Yvonne wrote in response to Matthew’s invitation, though she had already made up her mind not to go. But then came April, when another empty and unremarkable summer stretched before her like an endless walkway. She had no plans when school ended, nothing to do for three months. She considered teaching summer school. It seemed a good match: her strength as a teacher had been with students who needed extra help, not with the ones who excelled. The honor students were Peter’s forte; if he had one flaw as a teacher, and as a parent, it was that he lacked patience with anything short of brilliance. Yvonne had discussed the possibility of summer school with George, the principal, who, during his first marriage, had dinner with Peter and Yvonne at least once a month. But George had suggested she take a break from teaching— “just for the summer,” he said, his hand on her shoulder—and she knew then that if he could, George would suggest she take a more permanent hiatus.

His lack of faith in her had to do with Oliver Cromwell. On a Friday that past February, she delivered her standard lecture about Cromwell and the organization of the British Commonwealth. After the first few minutes, she’d noticed that everyone, even her least devoted student, was paying rapt attention. This was followed by snickers, and she knew something was wrong. Later in the day, an anonymous note appeared in her faculty mailbox: “You gave the exact same lecture WORD FOR WORD twice this week.” It was a student’s handwriting—she recognized his oblong Os. No doubt word of Yvonne’s forgetfulness had gotten around school and been brought to George’s attention as well. Summer school was no longer an option; she’d be lucky to have a job in the fall.

“Mom, please come,” Matthew begged during a phone conversation in mid-April when they had little else to discuss. Yvonne had been standing in rain boots on her porch. She would have been flattered by Matthew’s invitation if he actually seemed to want her presence, but she knew he was including her for the sake of appearances. If Callie’s parents were joining them, how could he explain his mother’s absence?

“It looks like Aurelia and Henry are coming now too,” he added.

The prospect of Aurelia’s presence—and especially Henry’s—made the trip more alluring. Yvonne had worried for so long that Aurelia would reject any romantic attention, just as she had shielded herself from her parents’ affection. Now Yvonne was quietly thrilled whenever Henry put his arm around Aurelia and Aurelia allowed it to remain.

“Could I come for part of it?” Yvonne asked Matthew.

It had all been settled during that one long phone call. Once they decided Yvonne would meet Matthew, the Campbells, Aurelia, and Henry halfway through their cruise, in Turkey, she knew she would spend the preceding week and two days in Datça. As soon as she made the decision, her mood improved and the light drizzle ceased. She removed the take-out menus rubber-banded to her doorknob and threw them in the trash.

That evening Yvonne had gone online and found this house. A “gracious house,” a “meer walk” from the beach, the website said. She would spend nine days here and then the boat would pick her up in the Datça harbor.

In Ali Çelik’s kitchen, she continued eating cherries until her stomach was full and her fingers were purple. She cleaned up and washed her hands, made sure the door and windows were locked, and with heavy legs walked up to the master bedroom.

She changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth, rinsed her swollen feet in the shower, and collapsed onto the bed. The headboard suggested it was king-sized, but as she moved under the covers toward the center, Yvonne discovered two mattresses had been pushed together, bound by a single sheet. At home, she had started sleeping in the middle of her queen mattress—it made her feel less small, less irrelevant than staying on her side, or his—but here that would not be possible. Each night she would have to choose.

She lay on the bed with the light on, staring at a hook in the ceiling, directly above the bed. It was an eyehook, the kind used to hang a plant. Who would want to hang a plant from there?

She couldn’t sleep. She stood and scanned the bookshelf. The majority of the books were in Turkish—even The Da Vinci Code, whose ubiquitous cover design Yvonne recognized. A few books were in German, and one in English: The Woman’s Guide to Anal Sex. She read the spine again to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. She opened the front cover and an order slip from Amazon.com slipped out. It had been sent to “Manon.” Yvonne flipped through the book, pausing at the diagrams, and replaced the slip and the book on the shelf. Çelik apparently hadn’t gotten around to putting everything away in time for his renter.

She returned to bed, trying to get comfortable. Various images flew, unbeckoned, to her mind: the note she had found beneath the windshield wiper of her car after Peter’s memorial service, which read, “Can’t you see what you did? If you had parked your car one foot back someone else could have parked in front of you. But you didn’t. Next time, try not to be so selfish. Try to think of other people in this world.” The fact that she focused on this note, that week and for the following months—and still, now—was maddening, baffling. A note about her parked car! But it seemed to contain all that she hated about that time, those days of obligation and defeat.

And then there was the image of the woman in the gray winter coat who had appeared at her doorstep all those Decembers ago. Yvonne had been pouring water into the red bowl at the base of the Christmas tree when she saw a woman she didn’t recognize walking up their front steps. Even the woman’s gait was angry. A loud, determined knock. Yvonne opened the door.

“Are you Aurelia’s mother?” the woman said. Her face was ravaged, her eyes wild.

“Yes,” Yvonne said.

“Well,” the woman said, “I want you to know that your daughter just landed my daughter in intensive care.”

How deceived Yvonne had been to believe Aurelia was sober then, that it was so easy to return from a rehab center in Arizona to Burlington High School. How deluded she had been to think that Aurelia wasn’t dealing. It was what they had told Yvonne and Peter in the family counseling sessions they’d gone to: “All kids who do drugs, deal drugs.” “Not our Aurelia,” she said to Peter, who was reluctant to welcome their daughter back home. “Not our Aurelia,” he had repeated, but coming out of his mouth, the words meant something very different.

Soon the two episodes joined together, and it was the enraged mother leaving a note on Yvonne’s car. Yvonne shook her head, as though she could detach the image from her mind. Her skin was moist, covered with salt. She got up and swung open the window. The wind promptly swept it shut. She looked at the clock. Three. She’d been trying to sleep for two hours. She tried sleeping on her side, with a pillow between her legs, the way she had when she was pregnant. She tried to sleep on her stomach. The pillowcase was rough on her face. She removed a well-worn T-shirt from her suitcase and wrapped it around the pillow.

At dawn she realized the crocheted curtains offered no solace from the light. She rose to examine her other options for sleep. As she stood on the threshold of each of the other bedrooms, she was reminded of her younger self. Every night, after brushing her teeth, she would check on the twins. Matthew’s room smelled of buttermilk, that heavy scent of boy. But from the start Aurelia had been a restless sleeper, given to bizarre positionings. One night her legs would be crawling the wall by her bed, her mouth open in amazement. The next she would be facedown, limbs spread like a skydiver.

At six in the morning, wandering the Datça house like a phantom, Yvonne settled on the room with the twin beds and heavy curtains, and crawled into the bed closer to the door. She needed to sleep; she wanted to be strong the next day. It had been twenty-eight years since she and Peter had honeymooned in Datça. She wanted to wake up ready.

A piercing sound was slicing through the house. A siren? An air raid? She rolled out of bed, taking the covers with her at first, then disentangled herself. She ran into the hallway and tried to determine the source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere around her—above, below, the walls themselves. She was surrounded. She ran down the stairs and it shrieked louder. In the living room, she lunged toward something black, plastic, near the TV. A telephone. She listened to it wail again, and heard similar cries coming from above, from what she now realized were the other phones.

She picked up the phone nearest her. How did one say hello in Turkish? She settled on “Allo.”

“Good morning. Did I wake you? It’s Ali Çelik!”

“I was resting . . .”

“You can’t sleep the day away!”

What time was it?

“I was calling to check on you, to make sure everything is okay.”

“The house is great,” she said, looking around the living room. In the morning, it looked less romantic, more sterile. But still, it was clearly a well-kept, clean house.

“Good. I’d like to come by and say hello.”

“Yes,” Yvonne said. “And I owe you the remainder of the deposit.”