dear, why not leave the man for a little so that he can talk to the other guests?’ He seemed unmoved by his mother’s moods.
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ she said. ‘Go on then and speak with those idiots. They’ll bore you to death, tell you all about their properties and what’s going to be renovated in town, the prices of land by the sea, treasure at the church … Now, Rahmi is going to pick you up and bring you to our house on Thursday. I’m making lamb stew … Don’t come with a full stomach and don’t you forget.’
‘How could I?’
Rahmi put his arm in mine and as he led me over to the other guests he asked, ‘Did she do your head in? Sometimes she can really go too far, but you should forgive her. Gülten told me about it. My sister, the one you just met.’
That evening I planned to ask everyone there about Zuhal and gather as much information as I could. I was sure these people would have some entertaining stories.
The garden was tastefully designed. There were olive, kumquat, lemon and tangerine trees with glistening ripe fruit, and enormous magnolias and oleander that were clearly not from the region. In the corners there were pergolas draped with honeysuckle and jasmine vines. The ample open space in front of the house (more of a castle or a château) was divided by two flowerbeds filled with tulips of all colours. Mustafa said that flowers for every season were planted there.
A broad, flowing staircase, also made of granite, led to the entrance of the stone house. There was a large veranda decorated with the capitals of columns salvaged from ancient ruins and the sun streamed in through large windows. At night, when all the lights were twinkling, you could see the palace from town. It looked like a giant lantern.
An air of intimidating magnificence lent by the black stone and the bright light that streamed in through the windows seemed to reflect Mustafa’s double nature; he had built a house in his own image.
Rahmi took me over to a group of men.
I always get the same feeling when I’m with a group of men. A man inhabits two extremely different worlds: he is either a savage or a child. There is nothing in between. He jumps from one extreme to the other, from childishness to savagery and back again. The savagery manifests itself in different ways – straightforward physical violence, wit, intrigue, curses and peacock-like displays – but the childishness is always the same: an exaggerated display of playfulness and pain, a feminine side.
During this festive roasting of the lambs, these men were like children in a bath tub, talking about football, women and the expensive prostitutes they knew in the big city as if they were playing with rubber ducks.
They were superficially respectful towards me, and distant, because in their eyes I wasn’t sufficiently childish or savage – and perhaps because I was a writer. In fact I was both. But I chose to hide these emotions behind a smile. I didn’t want them to see either.
True, I wasn’t one of them, and that wasn’t a problem. But if I tried to seem like one of them I would only lose whatever esteem they might allow me. I knew that sooner or later one of them would start talking about what I was really interested in. And indeed someone did.
With a polite smile on my face, I asked: ‘Where does the legend about that church come from? Who came up with the idea that Jesus is buried up there?’
Poor people in town believed that Jesus was buried at the church, but for the rich it was a different story altogether: they saw money where the poor saw Christ.
Hamdullah Bey, who owned a famous resort outside the big city, said: ‘Probably a Roman general came up with that story.’
Then each of them told me their version of the story, picking up where the last person left off. ‘There’s a deep, intricate maze under that church. A Roman general buried the pirate treasure up there, and to be sure no one would ever find it he built a church over it and spread the rumour that Christ had been buried there.’
‘Well, then who does it belong to?’
Silence.
Rahmi finally answered. The others assumed a serious and solemn air.
‘No one knows who owns it now. They say it once belonged to an Ottoman Pasha. But no one knows who has the deed now. It has to be someone in town, and whoever has it is afraid to come out and say so.’
‘Why’s that?’ I said, interrupting him.
‘There’s an enormous fortune up there, more than you could even begin to imagine. You could buy a country with that kind of money. It’s treasure collected from hundreds of pirate ships. They would never let just one person have that much money. That amount of money is dangerous. So the holder of the deed is afraid and keeps anonymous while he plots how to get away with the money. Or else …’
‘Or else …’ I said and waited for him to go on.
‘Or else the papers were lost when the Pasha died and the deed to the church went to a relative. Or who knows, maybe the butler, and then one of his children inherited the deed, but surely it was written in Ottoman and perhaps this person doesn’t even know what it means. Or it’s packed away in a chest in someone’s attic.’
‘Hasn’t anyone ever excavated the place?’
‘You would have to dig secretly, and that’s not easy. It’s full of mazes and deep wells. And it’s bad luck to dig in such a place. There were a few archeologists who got government permission but in the end they all died. And that’s the truth, my friend, they are all dead and gone.’
‘How did they die?’ I asked, astounded.
‘Traffic accident, drowned in the sea, shot over a dispute.’
‘But then how do you explain these deaths?’
‘I don’t. But I do know that the entire town keeps a close eye on that place, and probably not just people here. If someone even goes near the church there’s talk about it in no time.’
‘So it’s dangerous to go there?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t advise it. People are willing to let the treasure be, but no one wants anyone else to have it. People would blacklist anyone who went near the church.’
Then he warned me again, ‘Everyone in town keeps a close eye on the place,’ and for a moment they all turned and glared. That’s when I understood why no other outsider was living in town: everyone here was rife with paranoia that stemmed from a rumour going back a hundred years. They saw each other as treasure fiends and anyone new in town was only treated with hostility.
They were all looking for that deed and secretly conducting research and manoeuvering, gathering people from local gangs to act as spies, watching each other all the time. A newcomer in town was eventually forced out, and if he didn’t go, there was an accident.
The endless search had become a way of life. As Rahmi said, ‘Everyone is willing to let the treasure be, but no one is willing to let anyone else have it.’ In this town, even thinking this was tantamount to losing a grip on reality.
On this bench, I can see how the treasure drove everyone out of their minds, poisoned generations, and cut people off from the outside world. For them, outsiders were always enemies.
They
