Godstone

That afternoon, I managed to find Salim a doctor; he spoke no English but good German. I had forgotten that Salim spoke perfect German; he had spent three years studying at the Technical University of Munich.

The doctor gave him some painkillers. They were the same ones, I think, that the doctor in Istanbul had given me. Salim seemed happy with them, and I must admit I was a trifle jealous. The doctor said that they would also help with the earache that Salim told him had recently developed, along with the pain in his left arm that had unfortunately resurfaced.

“You know,” I told Salim as we left the office, “the day that you wake up without any pain will be the day that you know you’re dead.”

He didn’t seem to think it was funny.

Later that afternoon, Salim and I were back in our usual café in Ürgüp, discussing what we should do. I told him that I intended to go back to England. I wanted to give the stone back to my uncle, but I wasn’t sure how he would react. After all, I had lied to him; I had told him that I had lost the stone when I was mugged in Istanbul. I suspected that Gee might already have told my uncle that I still had the stone, but I didn’t know how he would feel about my lying to him.

Salim suggested that I call my uncle and explain. He said honesty was usually the best policy and that the sooner I called my uncle, the better. So we went together to the post office. Salim waited outside while I called.

Once I got through, my uncle told me that Geraldine had already told him that I still had the stone. She had explained why I had lied to him when I said that I had lost it. I wasn’t sure whether to believe my uncle or not, but he said he quite understood. He told me he would have done the same thing in the same situation.

I said that I wanted to bring the stone back to England, but he was strongly against it. He said it was “too complicated,” but he didn’t elaborate.

I told him I didn’t understand why Gee had asked me to hang around for one month in Turkey, and I asked him if I could take the stone right away to Israel. He replied that he couldn’t explain over the phone, but the dates were important and I should respect them.

“Just stay in Turkey for a while,” he said. “And take a break. You need it.”

He then asked me if I was still drinking. I told him that I wasn’t and that I thought that Gee had somehow hypnotised me into stopping. He didn’t comment.

As we were ending the conversation, the tone of his voice changed, sending a shiver down my spine.

“William,” he said slowly, “a great deal depends on you getting that stone to Israel. Some very bad people are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know that you didn’t ask for this job, and I also know that it is not turning out as I had planned. But you have to succeed. Do you understand that?”

“I will do my best,” I replied.

There wasn’t much else I could do but my best. My uncle was right: I hadn’t asked for this job, and I didn’t think I was up to it. I was way out of my depth, and as I left the post office, I felt in desperate need of a drink. I felt as if a huge rat were chewing away at my insides.

I told Salim about the conversation, and he said that I had been right to talk to my uncle. He then suggested that I should call Simon, my real-estate-agent friend in London, to find out if he had made any progress in selling the flat. I went back into the post office and called him.

“Hello, mate,” Simon said, once I had got through to him. “I hear you are in a spot of bother.”

I had known Simon most of my life. We had been at school together, and, by coincidence, we also went to the same university. He had gotten thrown out after failing his second-year exams; neither of us had done any work for them, but somehow I had managed to pass mine. He was less lucky.

“I am a bit financially embarrassed at the moment,” I replied. “I had a run-in with the copper market and lost.”

“You literally bet the house on it?” Simon asked in disbelief.

“I am afraid so but more by inattention than anything else. I took my eye off the ball.”

“Well, knowing you, I am sure you will be up and running again soon. But are you sure you want to sell the flat? The market is a bit soft at the moment.”

“I don’t have any choice, mate,” I replied, a little less cheerily than I had hoped. “I have the old firm knocking on the door, looking to be repaid. I am afraid I am a distressed seller.”

“Well, I will do my best for you,” Simon replied with forced enthusiasm. “I have already had a few visits. Everyone likes the work you’ve had done on the place, particularly the new kitchen. It feels brand new, almost as if no one has ever lived in it.”

“Well, I haven’t been there long, and I don’t spend much time there. My flatmate is hardly ever there either; he is always out chasing girls.”

“Is that Salim?” he asked. “The bloke who came and gave me the keys? Is he your flatmate?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason really. He seemed a bit odd, a bit slippery. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw an elephant.”

“Oh, he’s all right,” I replied breezily. “He’s a bit of a ladies’ man, but otherwise he is OK.” It was rare for Simon to voice an opinion about someone, and he was usually right when he did.

“So when is the last time Salim paid you rent, then?” Simon asked.

I don’t think that Salim had ever paid me rent. He was supposed to, but somehow either I forgot to ask or he forgot to pay.

“You may have a point,” I replied. I was suddenly less sure of myself—and less sure of Salim.

“There is one thing,” Simon continued, changing the subject. “The smoke alarm in the kitchen keeps beeping. I changed the battery, but it didn’t stop the beep.”

“I didn’t even know that I had a smoke alarm,” I replied. “Maybe get an electrician around to have a look at it? I will pay.”

“I’ll add it to the bill. In the meantime, take care of yourself.”

“You too,” I replied, hanging up.

Salim was waiting outside and gave me an encouraging smile when he saw me. I thought about what Simon had said about him, but I decided Simon was wrong. Salim was there when I needed him. Isn’t that what friendship is all about?

We went back to the café and drank some more tea. I wanted to order a raki, but I didn’t. Instead I poured half a ton of sugar into my glass of tea; it made it taste better. Until I saw Gee again and asked her to undo whatever she had done to me, I would have to get used to being a teetotaller.

“So are you going to hang around until your birthday?” Salim asked me.

I nodded.

“Well, then, I will be very happy to hang around with you,” he continued. “I think you could use the company—and quite honestly, mate, I think you need someone to keep an eye on you and make sure you are all right.”

Something in the way he said it made me wonder if it hadn’t been Gee that sent Salim to keep an eye on me. I asked him if he had ever spoken to her, but he denied it. Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether I believed him.

“If you are up for it, we could travel around a bit, discover the country, pluck some peaches,” Salim suggested. His face broke into a huge grin when he said pluck some peaches.

“I thought you had to get back to the university for the start of the new term…to teach,” I replied. “Doesn’t term start around now?”

“Yes, but I’m on medical leave—with a doctor’s certificate—for the next month, for my heart.”

“You have a problem with your heart?” I asked.

“Hey, even hypochondriacs get sick,” he replied. He wasn’t joking. “Speaking of my health, I would like to have another look at the stone.”

Reluctantly, I took the stone out of my pocket and passed it over to him. He looked into it and smiled.

“So this thing sometimes tells the future?” he asked.

“Apparently. What have you seen?”

“Me, having a good time,” he replied, his grin getting even broader.

At that moment, the group of backpackers came into the restaurant. The Austrian girl smiled at Salim, and he smiled back.

“We can leave tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight, I have to practise my German.”

We did indeed leave Ürgüp the following morning, taking a bus to Kızkalesi, a village on Turkey’s south coast. It was actually three buses; the last one was held together with string and rust. Including all the stops and changes, it took us pretty much the whole day to get there.

Salim and I didn’t talk much on the bus trip; Salim needed to catch up on his sleep, so I spent the long hours thinking back over the previous three days and looking out the bus window. There wasn’t much to see: donkeys carrying firewood, farmers and their families bringing in the potato harvest, dusty agricultural towns, and trucks—lines of trucks moving goods either to the port of Mersin or from it.

The previous evening, I had realised that Salim and I had adjoining rooms in the hotel. The walls were as thin as paper. I don’t speak German, but I didn’t need to. I might as well have been in the room with them.

To get away from the noise and unable to sleep, I had gotten dressed and gone down to the lobby. Demir was still at the reception desk, and we shared a tea together. I asked him if he still had all the registration books from when the hotel was opened until now, and he said he did.

I asked him if I could see the registration book from 1976. It took him a while to find it. It took me no time to find what I was looking for: Gee’s name and her signature. She had stayed in room number six in September 1976, shortly after the hotel had opened.

Kızkalesi had once been a major city, but now it wasn’t even really a village; it was more a hundred-metre alleyway that stretched from the main road to the beach, lined with small shops, cafés, and a couple of guesthouses.

Kızkalesi is known for its ancient castle, built on a small rocky island a little way from the shore. As Salim and I walked down the alley from the main road to the sea, I saw the remains of a second castle on the mainland. At one time, the two castles had been joined by a protective sea wall.

We found a small hotel overlooking the beach and booked two rooms. Well, that’s not quite true; the owner of the hotel found us as we were wandering down the alley. He seemed friendly and spoke English. He introduced himself as Kivanç and said that his name was Turkish for “pride and joy.” He told us with a laugh that he was an only child.

As a precaution, I asked Kivanç for two rooms that weren’t adjoining. He gave us rooms on different floors. We were the only people in the place.

It was about five o’clock in the evening, but it was still warm enough for a swim. I wanted to stretch my muscles a little after being cooped up in a bus all day and to wash the dust off me. Salim said he would explore the alley a little to find a place for dinner. I suspected he was more interested in finding company for the night.

I changed into my swim things and headed for the beach. The water was patchy, sometimes warm and sometimes icy cold. When I came out, the sand was still warm, and I lay in the evening sun for a while. The beach was empty except for a group of young boys kicking a football around. I must have fallen asleep for a few minutes, and when I woke up, there was a man of about my age or maybe a couple of years older sitting next to me on the sand. He was thickly built and muscular, more a farmer than a soldier, with his long hair covering his ears.

“Shalom,” the man said when he saw I was awake. “My name is Aaron. Who are you, and where are you from?”

“My name is Will…William. I am from England,” I replied, not put off by his abrupt questioning.

“I am pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand. I reached out my hand to him, and he shook it in a firm, calloused grip.

“You were on the bus today,” he said. “I saw you.”

“Which bus?” I asked him. “I was on three.” There was something in the way that he said “I saw you” that I didn’t like.

“I am on a working holiday,” he told me, ignoring my question. “I am a computer scientist, but my hobby is wine—well, vines really. I am in Turkey to look at its wine industry. I want to start a vineyard, a winery in Israel. So I research. And I have a holiday at the same time.

“You like Turkey?” he asked. It was a question that every Turk I’d met had asked me.

“I love it. The people are so friendly, the food is delicious, the climate is great—” It was my standard answer.

“Me,” he interrupted. “I don’t like it. Muslim.” He wrinkled up his nose.

“I am travelling with a friend,” I replied. “You must meet him.”

“Boy or girl?”

I told him my friend was a man.

“Gay?” Aaron asked. “Are you gay?”

I think he was just curious; I don’t think he was trying to pick me up. In any case, I didn’t rate his chances for trying to pick up Salim. I shook my head.

“Good,” he said. “I will see you later.” It was almost a command.

I stayed on the beach and watched the sun go down over the sea. When it started getting cold, I made my way back to the hotel, hoping not to bump into Aaron on the way. When I got back, I found Salim sitting on the bench outside. He looked depressed.

“This place is a dump,” he announced. “It’s empty.”

“I actually quite like it,” I replied. “It has a nice feel to it.”

Salim looked up at me as if I were mad.

“By the way, I met a chap on the beach; he seems a nice fellow. You should meet him,” I said.

Salim grunted. He had little interest in meeting a man. I went into the hotel and showered. My room had a sea view, and I looked forward to staying in the village for a few days; it would give me more time to think. I had a lot to absorb, a lot to work over in my mind.

When I went downstairs again, Salim seemed to have cheered up and was chatting to the hotel owner; they were talking about a New Zealand girl who ran a bar farther up the alley.

I asked Kivanç where we should eat, and he replied, “Here! You are my guests tonight.”

He went into the hotel lobby and brought out a small table and two folding chairs that he set up in the sand alleyway. He then went back in and fetched a bottle of raki and three glasses.

“Tonight, we drink together. We celebrate life!” He looked terribly disappointed when I told him that neither of us drank. “Salim is a Muslim,” I explained. “And I…I can’t drink. I don’t like the taste.”

“I am also Muslim,” he said to Salim as if he had just been insulted. “But I still drink. And you—” he insisted, pointing at me. “This raki the best, from my home village. You will like this.” He poured me a large glass of it, and we clinked glasses. I brought my glass to my lips, but the smell of excrement was overwhelming.

“I am sorry, Kivanç,” I said sadly. “I am sure that this is excellent raki, but I cannot drink it.”

“Then I drink alone,” he replied. “But we eat together. We have best meal. I go prepare it.”

“Whatever your friend did to you to make you stop drinking, it sure worked,” Salim said with a smirk.

The three of us ate dinner together, and then Salim went off to “explore.” Kivanç and I played backgammon. I had played the game only once or twice before, and I wasn’t any good at it. Kivanç drank raki, and I drank tea, brought to me by a teenage boy who worked in a café farther up the alley. It was a clear, still night, and from where we sat, I could hear the waves lapping on the beach.

I left Kivanç at nearly midnight and went back to my room. Salim hadn’t reappeared, so I guess that his “exploring” had been fruitful. I opened the window and took the stone out of my pocket. I looked into it and saw the same scene as before. It was always the same scene: Mary on the pebble beach looking for shells, me swimming in the sea, treading water while I waved at her. My heart ached.

We stayed in Kızkalesi for five nights. Each day, I would get up early and go for a short run barefoot along the beach and then a swim in the sea. Breakfast would be pita bread, feta cheese, and black, oily olives. Then I would head back to the beach for a sleep in the morning sun followed by a workout: sit-ups, press-ups, that sort of thing. It was the first time that I had done any sort of physical exercise since Mary had died. I had forgotten how good it made me feel. I felt alive.

Each day, I would have lunch at one of the restaurants in the alleyway. It was the same food in every restaurant: fish that had been caught that morning, fried with peppers and aubergines. In the afternoon, I would swim again and then head back to my room to read. There was quite a selection of books in the hotel lobby. Most were in German, but some kind person had left the complete works of Thomas Hardy in English. I had read some of his novels when I was at school, but it was a joy to reread them and discover others that I hadn’t already read.

After dinner, I would play backgammon or cards with Kivanç. There were a lot of power cuts, so we would often play by candlelight.

Sometimes Salim would join us with the girl from New Zealand. Her name was Millie—Salim called her Millie the Magnificent. She was a lovely, slightly chubby girl who had grown up on her parents’ farm, not far from Napier on the North Island. She was older than I by about five years, but there was something about her that made her seem even older. If Mary had met her, she would have called her an old soul.

After she left school, Millie had gone to work on the family farm. She told me they had sheep and dairy, but her real love was the horses. All the local farmers played polo, and most had their own polo fields; local farmers would take turns hosting competitions.

Millie had wanted to see the world and had taken a year off to travel to Europe. Shortly after arriving in the United Kingdom, she had fallen in love with a Turkish boy who was studying English in Brighton. Once he had finished his studies, they moved together to Istanbul, where she learned Turkish.

Her boyfriend had left her two years ago, and, evidently distraught, Millie had moved to Kızkalesi, where she got a job managing a bar. She worked there in the summer, and in the winter, she had a job as a hotel receptionist in Istanbul. For the moment, she had no intention of going back to Napier.

On the third day there, I met Millie by accident on the beach. She had just been swimming and was combing the beach for interesting shells. She had found a starfish, and she showed it to me. We sat and chatted for a while, and she asked me lots of questions about Salim. In the most diplomatic way I could manage, I tried to warn her about him—I even told her that he had a bride, already picked out for him, waiting back in Pakistan. But I soon realised that my warnings had come too late; she had already fallen in love with him.

That evening, the four of us—Salim, Millie, Kivanç, and I—had dinner together and played cards afterwards. Aaron walked down the alley and asked if he could sit with us. I hadn’t seen him since the first day on the beach, something that seemed odd, given how small the village was and how few tourists there were. He introduced himself to everyone, and Kivanç offered him some raki, which he accepted.

There was something about Aaron that threw a pall over the evening. He didn’t say much or intrude into our game, but just his presence was enough to spoil the atmosphere. While previously we had all been laughing and making jokes, the conversation went silent after he arrived. It was hard to describe. He didn’t make me feel anxious or ill at ease. Having him around just felt like lying in bed on a warm night covered by a heavy woollen blanket: weighed down and uncomfortable.

On the sixth morning in Kızkalesi, Salim woke me up early and told me that it was time to leave. He looked tired, and his eyes were red as if he had been crying. I guessed that he hadn’t been crying or that, if he had, it had been only crocodile tears. Whatever he had had going with Millie was now obviously broken.

“Do I have time for breakfast and a last swim?” I asked him. He told me that I did and that we could take a minibus that was scheduled to pass on the main road at the end of the alley at 11:30 a.m. I asked him where we were going, and he replied that Millie had told him about a small resort called Gazipaşa, a couple of hours away by bus.

“She has some English friends who work there,” he explained. “Whatever it is like, it must be better than this dump.”

I went for my swim and had my last breakfast of feta, bread, and black olives. Kivanç kept me company. I was genuinely sad to leave both him and the village. I thought about saying good-bye to Millie but decided it would be better not to.

We caught the minibus at 11:30 a.m. as planned, and I was disappointed to see Aaron on the same bus. I asked Salim if he had told him that we were leaving, but he said he hadn’t.

Getting to Gazipaşa was not as easy as Salim had said. The minibus only took us to Taçucu, where Aaron left us. We then had to take another bus and taxi to the camping site that Millie had recommended.

The place was virtually empty except for one Dutch and two German couples, all of whom were elderly. As we found out later, the two German couples drank heavily and sang a lot. The Dutch couple was more discreet. They spent their time reading and whispered when they talked. In any case, the Turkish owner rented us two cabins; thankfully Salim’s was on the opposite side of the camp to mine. I was closest to the sea, close enough to hear the waves.

That evening, we had dinner in what must have been the camp disco in the high season. After dinner, the Germans sang Bavarian folk songs while the owner played a bongo drum and his assistant played the spoons. One of the German couples started dancing, and the others joined in.

“What are we doing here?” I asked Salim. “You said the last place was a dump, but it was Saint-Tropez compared to this place.”

“You will see tomorrow,” he replied with a laugh. “Two English girls work here. It’s their day off today, and they’ve gone to Alanya but will be back tomorrow. Friends of Millie, one for you and one for me.” He nudged me hard in the ribs. “No drinking means more sex!”

He tried to wink at me, but he contorted his face in a way that made him look quite evil.

“I don’t think you should wink,” I told him. “It doesn’t suit you.”

I said goodnight to the others and went back to my cabin. There were no lights, and I had difficulty finding my way amongst the trees. There was something I didn’t like about this place. I had the feeling something really bad had once happened here, but I had no idea what.

As I approached my cabin, I thought I saw someone coming out through the cabin door. I couldn’t swear to it as it was pretty dark, but I was almost certain. I made a half-hearted attempt to go after him or her, but whoever it was disappeared into the shadows. I went to the cabin and switched on the light. My rucksack was open on the floor and the belongings spread out on the bed. Someone had been there.

I had kept the stone, my passport, and my wallet with me when I had gone to dinner. I didn’t have anything else worth stealing. Everything seemed to be there, but the incident unsettled me, and I had trouble sleeping. I lay awake for a few hours until the waves eventually lulled me into a listless sleep. A dog barked all night somewhere along the beach.

The next morning, I went for a swim, but the water was cold. The beach was too small for me to run along, so without much enthusiasm, I warmed myself up with a few exercises. I felt tired after my largely sleepless night.

When I went to breakfast, I noticed a man eating alone. He was a giant of a man—he must have been six foot, ten inches and was built like a heavyweight boxer.

Despite his size and bulk, he didn’t look at all threatening. He was in his midthirties and was dressed in tan trousers and a shirt. He was also wearing sandals with socks. With his thinning hair and his horn-rimmed glasses, he looked more like an accountant than a gangster. I wondered why he should be sitting there alone in this almost-empty campsite. I was about to go up to him to say hello when Salim turned up.

I asked Salim if anyone had been into his cabin the previous evening, but he said they hadn’t.

“In any case,” I said, “I don’t like this place; I want to move on. Girls or no girls.”

Salim told me he didn’t mind. He said that he had spoken to the owner and that the two English girls in question were not coming back after all.

“No business, no need,” he had said. Salim suggested that we go to Alanya to find them. He had the address of the guesthouse where they were staying.

The camp assistant who had played the spoons the previous evening drove us back into town. From there, we caught a minibus to Alanya and checked into a small hotel overlooking the beach, two rooms on different floors.

Salim asked the hotel owner for directions to the guesthouse and set off in search of the two English girls. The weather had turned a little colder, and I didn’t fancy a swim. Instead I went for a walk along the beach. As I turned around to head back to the hotel, I saw the giant of a man who had been having breakfast alone that morning. It might have been my imagination, but I had the impression that he was following me.

There was a huge storm that evening. I watched the lightning and the waves from my hotel balcony as glasses and tablecloths went flying in the café below. A child’s rubber dingy washed out to sea, and someone—probably the child’s father—dived into the waves to save it.

He swam out about fifty metres but then started to flounder in the rough waters. I could see that he was in trouble. I was about to rush downstairs to raise the alarm when I saw Aaron on the beach, stripping off to his briefs and diving into the waves. He swam well and, despite the rough water, quickly reached the man. Putting his arms around the man’s chest, he swam back with him to the shore.

I left my balcony and went down to the beach, where I joined a small group of tourists that had gathered to watch the unfolding drama. A small girl ran out to hug her father as Aaron helped him onto the beach. The man was a little shaken and a little embarrassed but otherwise OK. Aaron saw me and came over.

“I used to be a lifeguard,” he explained. “I worked in Tel Aviv during the university vacations.” The small crowd dissipated, and Aaron picked up his clothes from where he had dumped them on the beach.

“Do you need to dry off?” I asked. “I am staying in the hotel just here.”

Aaron shook his head and told me there was no need; he was staying at the hotel next door. Like me, he had been watching the scene from his bedroom window. Unlike me, he had reacted quickly, rushed down, and saved the girl’s father.

“Well, at least let me buy you dinner,” I offered, “to reward you for what you have just done.”

I hadn’t seen Salim since he had set out in search of the English girls, and I didn’t feel like eating alone. Aaron agreed with a nod of his head.

Over dinner, Aaron told me that he had got off the bus early to visit what he had understood to be an ancient vineyard but was now growing citrus fruit. He had met the family who owned the farm—the son spoke reasonable English—and Aaron had learned a lot.

He was certainly passionate about wine making. I had had no idea that Turkey produced wine, but he said that wine making might actually have started in Turkey.

“According to the Book of Genesis,” he explained, “Noah’s ark landed near Mount Ararat after the great flood. Once the waters had gone down, Noah planted a vineyard nearby with Boğazkere grapes. The same grape variety is still grown in the Euphrates valley of Eastern Anatolia, the birthplace of wine.”

Aaron talked about wine with such passion that I couldn’t help but share his enthusiasm. I began to think that I had misjudged him earlier.

“But in the meantime,” he continued, “I have to earn a living as a computer scientist.”

At that moment, the lights went out in the hotel—another power cut—and the waiter brought over some candles. The locals were evidently used to the power cuts.

“Have you heard of e-mail?” Aaron asked. I told him that I hadn’t. “It is a way of communicating, a way of sending written messages between computers,” he told me. “One day, everyone will have a computer, and everyone will communicate by e-mail. In my job, I have been working on something called an Internet mail-access protocol; it defines the way e-mails are sent.

“We Israelis are strong in technology,” he added proudly.

“And in nuclear science,” said a voice from behind me.

It was Salim; I didn’t know how long he had been standing there, listening to our conversation.

“You Israelis have over one hundred nuclear warheads,” Salim continued. “But Pakistan also has nuclear warheads. We have Muslim bombs to counter your Jewish bombs.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m very tired,” Aaron replied. “I will leave you now. Perhaps we will see one another tomorrow. Goodnight.”

“I think you upset him,” I told Salim once Aaron had left.

Salim sat down, looking dejected. “I don’t like that man,” he said. “There is something about him that I don’t trust. I mean, what is he doing here? Is he following us?”

“I doubt it,” I replied. “You don’t like him because he is a Jew and you are a Muslim. There is nothing else to it.”

“You are a Christian, and I like you,” Salim retorted.

“But talking of following people,” I said, ignoring his comment, “I think that someone may be following us or me at least. I saw him at the camp last night, and I saw him this morning on the beach.”

“Certainly a coincidence. If you see him again, tell me, and I will speak to him. But let’s leave tomorrow.”

“I guess you didn’t find the English girls.”

“I’m fed up with English girls,” he replied. “They are either frigid or complicated…or both. Australians and New Zealanders are the same.

“We can go to Side,” he continued. “I hear that it is full of German tourists; German girls are better. Austrians are better than Australians. German girls aren’t complicated, and they like sex.”

Just the thought of sex cheered him up, and he bid me goodnight with his usual big smile.