There is another long silence followed by a heavy sigh. “Why criticize the decrepit seed of an otherwise fruitful tree? There’s no point in it,” she says.
“You can’t build something on a lie, Auntie.”
“Nonsense. It was the only seed I had. And I used it. And I’m not ashamed or regretful. I spent my days loving those who mattered to me. What else is there in life?”
Orhan cannot think of a thing.
“Not like her,” continues Auntie Fatma. “She ran from his love and it broke him apart. Even when a nail comes out, it leaves a gaping hole. Your grandfather struggled in Istanbul. He made some contacts, started a small stall, but within months he had a disagreement with his partners. He left with nothing and returned to Karod, where what was left of the family textile operation was waiting for him.”
“It was not his textile business to come back to,” says Orhan.
“What are you talking about? Of course the business was his.”
“Those cauldrons. That house. Everything we have, everything Tarik Inc. was built on, belonged to Seda once,” Orhan says.
“That’s ridiculous. Who told you that?” Auntie Fatma snaps.
“It’s the truth. Seda’s real name is Lucine Melkonian. Dede knew it.”
“Lucine? Seda is Lucine?”
“Yes.”
Auntie Fatma is silent for a long moment.
“All those times he said that name, he was talking about Seda,” she says, more to herself than to him.
“Yes.”
“What does it matter?” Auntie Fatma says suddenly. “The Hagia Sophia once belonged to the Greeks. You don’t see us handing it back to them, do you?”
Orhan snorts at this. “She says you saved her life,” he says.
“Your dede should have left the past alone,” she says. After a minute, she asks, “What else does she say?”
“Many things.”
“What many things?” Auntie Fatma raises her voice.
“I don’t know. Stories about her and Dede when they were young. Stories of deportation and murder.”
“I liked it better when she didn’t speak,” says Fatma. “She never spoke, you know. Back then.”
“Well, she’s speaking now,” says Orhan.
“Forget her. Don’t waste any more of your time with her.”
“There’s more,” he says. “She’s got a niece who’s obsessed with the past. She keeps going on and on about genocide. Threatened to get a lawyer.”
“You need to call Yilmaz right away,” says Fatma. “He’ll be dealing with that lawyer of your father’s and he needs to know about this. Don’t be timid, my boy. Remember, according to our inheritance laws, all this belongs to you, not Seda. I don’t care who her father was. You know what happens when a thief steals from another thief?” she asks.
“I’m not in the mood for one of your proverbs,” Orhan says.
“God laughs. That’s what happens. God laughs.”
“You’re missing the point.” Orhan rests his forehead on the edge of the pay phone. “None of it belonged to Dede to start with.”
“It was abandoned and he knew how to run it,” she snaps at him. “Besides, he did come back for Seda. She’s the one who didn’t wait for him. She’s the one who chose to leave. Followed that half-starved uncle of hers and, of course, the ghosts of her people.”
“You lied to Dede,” he says.
“Your father was only a baby. Kemal saw him and went to him immediately. I let him believe what he wanted to believe. That the child was his, a parting gift from the woman who’d haunted him all those years.”
“And you went along with him,” Orhan says.
“Evet, yes. I offered to help him take care of what he thought was his child. I tried to get him to forget her. I did everything, everything in my power. We started something new, he and I, our own kind of family. But then, as he got older, he regressed further and further into his past. He sat in front of that withered old mulberry tree day after day, sketching till his hand cramped. He took to calling me Lucine, a name I had never heard until a few months ago. It was unbearable, let me tell you.
“He took to dyeing his damn skin the way he used to dye wool. You don’t know how many times I ran out there with a towel in my hands and a curse on my lips. And this business of putting Seda’s name in the will. For what? I’ve never seen such idiocy.”
“When you went back to Sivas with him, was there anyone there?” asks Orhan.
“Just a Greek boy named Demi. He knew all the formulas for the dyes. Why do you ask?”
“Don’t you see,” he says. “None of it belonged to Dede. And even if it did, if he wasn’t my grandfather, then I can’t inherit a thing.”
“Nobody knows that,” says Fatma.
“She knows it,” says Orhan. “And her niece will know it soon enough.”
“Nobody will believe them,” she says. “This is no time to be weak. I don’t care what you do. I’ll be dead soon, and your father will figure himself out. But this is your future we’re talking about here.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t bear it right now,” says Orhan.
“What?”
“The part about you dying.”
“There, you see. It doesn’t matter what you call me.”