Baksheesh Read Online Free Page A

reservoir. I often used to go there if I was feeling very depressed, even worse than on that day. The water dripping from the ceiling would comfort me. Yet, isn’t that a form of torture? Is it in fact possible to use absolutely anything to torture people? Can torture consist of something that would normally give pleasure?
    I stroked the external reservoir walls that jutted out onto the pavement, as if they housed a sacred place or a sepulchre. The officials looked at me strangely as they tried to close the doors at the top of the steps that twisted and turned as if going down a bottomless well.
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    Kasım Bey and I were drinking tea and talking about the forthcoming elections. I was trying to work out which party he’d be voting for, but I didn’t ask him. However, Turks have no qualms about asking each other such questions, not even about how much money they earn. Kasım Bey kept complaining about the difficulties of managing on his low public-sector wages. It was clearly a preamble leading up to a request for a bribe. Finally, he named a sum, saying that it wouldn’t be just for himself, but that he had to distribute it to others who would see the job got done. They would share it. Meanwhile, I was converting the sum he had named into euros. It wasn’t unreasonable. He wanted three
hundred euros, twice the amount of the increase demanded by my landlady. So little. So cheap. I was going to pay it anyway, whatever the figure, because it would give me the chance to buy a property and escape the tyrannies of landladies for good. If it didn’t work out, it would merely be a gamble that didn’t pay off.
    I went to draw some money out of the bank, and Kasım Bey waited for me at the tea garden. He had with him a list of four addresses in the Kuledibi area that were about to be turned over to the Treasury.
    â€œThe court case is still ongoing,” he said. “When it’s over, they’ll be put up for sale. Have a look at them, miss, and we’ll go for whichever one you like best.”
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    Before returning home, I called in at the Cactus Café, where I collapsed onto a bar-stool by the door like some lonely old tramp and ate a Mediterranean salad. It was my favourite salad, almost an antidepressant in itself – soothing for the nerves.
    But, like all small pleasures, the pleasure of a Mediterranean salad didn’t last for long.
    I’d been better off when I was single, without Selim, before he had even entered my life. I had hope then. I had that secret hope of starting a relationship that would last for ever. I also had a few dates. I certainly wasn’t like this, torn to pieces and suffering like a wounded animal.
    I pressed my hand against my ribcage as if I were in physical pain. Was it possible for a wounded heart to have physical manifestations? Had I forgotten all about the scars of my long singleton days? Had I forgotten how a single word could reverberate in one’s head? Over and over, like a stuck record. I opened my mouth wide and let out a silent scream. As I did when I was a child. Like the screams I used to make in my room under the bedclothes.
    Why did that quarrel seem so important? It wasn’t even a proper row.

    I shan’t drone on about how I passed that night. I was brought up to believe that people should work through their crises on their own and never show defeat. It was a stupid petit bourgeois mentality, but it had been drummed into me. Or maybe being petit bourgeois was genetic and had nothing to do with nurture.
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    I felt quite good in the morning, which was a surprise. Life is full of surprises! Isn’t it surprising that people can’t even predict their waking mood? I felt as if I’d just spent years with shaven-headed priests in a Buddhist monastery where spiders were spinning webs over the monastery doors. I felt as if I was flying, as if I weighed no more than seventeen kilos. However, I pulled myself