“You’re the one who wrote the letter,” she says, pressing her lips together to form a tight line. Before he can answer, she jumps in again. “I remember the name now from the front of the envelope. Türko?lu, wasn’t it?” She pronounces his name not like an American or even a city Turk, but like an Anatolian.
Orhan goes mute. His stomach tightens and curls in on itself. I’ve done nothing wrong, he reminds himself. “I . . .” he begins. “Yes,” he says.
“I haven’t read your letter Mr. Türko?lu, but my aunt hasn’t been the same since she got it,” she says.
Orhan nods at this, admitting guilt.
“What do you want? Why are you here?”
The question is simple enough, but it sounds profound coming from her. Orhan is not sure how to answer it.
“Please, call me Orhan,” he says, wishing they could rewind and go back to the nursing home, when Ani treated him like a kind stranger. “I’m here because my late grandfather put your aunt in his will,” he says finally.
An uncomfortable silence hangs between them.
“So you thought you would just pump me for information?”
“I didn’t pump you for anything,” he says.
“How did they know each other?” Ani asks.
“I was hoping she would tell me that,” he says.
Ani scans the floor, as if she’s lost something. “What has he left her?” she asks.
“Some sketchbooks,” Orhan lies, then thinking better of it, adds, “and a house.”
“A house,” she repeats.
“In Sivas,” he adds.
“Sivas,” she repeats.
“Do you know Sivas?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood.
She does not answer him right away. She slams the car door and locks it instead. “Not directly,” she says as she starts walking back to the home. “My father described it as a paradise.”
Orhan scoffs at this. “Maybe he was talking about a different place,” he says to her back.
She does not slow her steps. She walks like she’s fleeing from a demon.
“Memories are tricky things,” he goes on. “Happy or sad, they are always accompanied by a sense of loss.” He knows he’s treading on thin ground, but he can’t seem to stop talking. “The past does not define me and it shouldn’t define you.” He flings these words at her receding back. They come out louder and more forcefully than he’d intended. Ani stops her hurried steps and turns so suddenly that Orhan almost collides into her.
“What a Turkish thing to say.” She says each word softly, individually, letting each one land in the tiny space left between their faces.
“Are you insulting me?” Orhan asks.
“You don’t even know your own past,” she says, resuming her gait.
“How would you know?” he says, thinking how infuriating it is to constantly be talking to her back. “You don’t know me. I live with my past every day.”
“Then we have something in common,” she says. “Only I have to live with my father’s past too, and my aunt’s, and the past of every other surviving member of my race.”
“What are you talking about?” asks Orhan, his frustration rising.
“Genocide.” She raises her voice. “I’m talking about genocide.”
“What does all that have to do with me?” Orhan yells back at her. “My grandfather fought in the First World War. He defended his country from Russians, the British, the French, and a bunch of Armenian insurgents who would have gladly handed him over to his enemies. How does that make him, me, guilty of anything?”
“What does it have to do with you?” she asks, raising her voice to meet his. “Everything,” she shouts, her arms making a wide circle. “It has everything to do with you.”
How ridiculous to be arguing with this stranger. “Listen,” he says, regaining his composure, “if you want to debate some event from a hundred years ago, go ahead. I’m only here to get a signature, maybe even some closure.”
“You want closure.” She pronounces the words like a declaration, her voice tight and controlled.
“If I can get it. Yes,” he says, placing her box at the dining-room door.
“I see,” Ani says, nodding her head in what looks like sarcastic agreement. “Closure would be good,” she says, “but you’re not going to get it from my aunt.”
We’ll see about that, thinks Orhan.
“I’d like closure too, Mr. Türko?lu. Perhaps I’ll get a lawyer to help me get some closure.”
“If you think that scares me, you’re wrong,” Orhan lies. “No Turkish court would give our house to a perfect stranger. I’m only here because I’m a decent person.”
“And because you want closure,” she says in a mocking voice. “Will you still be in town tomorrow?” she asks.
“Probably,” he says.
“Good. You should come to the opening of the art exhibit,” she says walking back into the dining room. “There’ll be lots of closure then. Until then, stay far away from my aunt.”
CHAPTER 35
Semantics