Here is part of In Flight that was edited out. A little character development, part of my desire to understand what made Marta tick.
“Tell me something about your family,” Vasilli said.
In response, Marta leaned back in her seat and scowled at him.
“Okay, never mind. Tell me about your life in New York,” he prompted. “I told you about how I came to live in America. Tell me your story.”
“Okay, you want the sorry tale of my introduction to New York? When I first arrived, I stayed in a rooming house near 42nd Street. It was horrific – noise, bugs, rats, shootings outside - and this guy at the reception desk told me he knew a place for rent, that he’d help me get a decent place. But he wouldn’t take me there without something in return. That was the first time I had to make that trade. It got easier. Does that shock you?”
Although he squirmed in his chair, Vasilli shook his head. “Is that what you are trying to do? To make me uncomfortable?” he coughed. “Go on. Tell me your story. The real story. I want to hear that.”
Marta gazed at him for a moment, considering his request, before she spoke again. Her voice became low and choppy, as if she was reading a story about someone else’s life. In a way, she was – Marta felt herself disengage from the memories she revealed until they felt like a movie she’d watched once, long ago, or a play on an off-Broadway stage. She could see the scene in her mind as she described it to Vasilli: The room she rented from a couple of sisters living in an enormous ground floor apartment on Morningside Drive, which was probably one of the most dangerous parks in the city at that time. The two elderly sisters.
Marta lived with them for three years, in a small back bedroom that looked out on an air shaft. The apartment had five bedrooms, three bathrooms, two sitting rooms, a formal dining room and a library that was darkly paneled and filled with leather-bound classics it would take a lifetime to read. Marta spent hours in that room, reading, studying, while other borders came and went without making an impression on the reclusive law student.
The sisters had two rules – no visitors of the opposite sex, and no smoking. A list was posted in the kitchen of all the little things that “reasonable people” were supposed to respect. Like washing out the tub, cleaning your own dishes, wiping down the countertop. Never leaving an empty toilet paper roll, or putting unwrapped “female things” in the trash. The only thing the sisters asked was for the roomers to join them for tea every Sunday afternoon in the front parlor. Mostly Marta was the only one who would sit with them. They served those little English Pym biscuits and they’d use the real tea set, with china cups and silver tongs for the sugar cubes.
Marta paid almost nothing to rent that room, which was ideal since she had nothing to spare. She ate salad picked up from a corner deli, cramming half of it in her mouth before going to the scales at the checkout counter. Once a week, she might have a burger, just to get some protein. In the beginning, Marta worked at the library, shelving books and answering questions, working on her English by listening to tapes and eavesdropping. When she got her degree and first job, Marta stayed on with the sisters for a while as she saved up some money to get a nice place. They were starting to fail, starting to depend on her too much, so she realized it was time to move on. They eventually had to have nurses living in, taking care.
“The last time I heard from them,” Marta paused. “I’m not sure. I think I did see an obit just a little while ago. They both lived to be in their 90s. I wish…No, not that I’d kept in touch. I couldn’t help them, and they encouraged me to go out on my own.” She sighed. “I just wish I knew what happened to all those books.”
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Here's my heart
Walking into a bookstore and asking the manager to a. sell your book, and b. allow you to speak and/or sign books there is like walking in the door, reaching a hand into your chest cavity, ripping out your heart and handing it to someone. Please, take it. Really, I don't need it any longer. My heart is here in these pages.
Doing marketing yourself after self-publishing is even better. You have to do it yourself, and therefore, no one wants to talk to you. As if the beating bloody heart you just offered is diseased somehow. So no, thanks anyway. We'll wait until you're famous and have a marketing department pushing your book on us. Which we will then complain about too. Because we never get any say about what we sell. Duh.
So, it's hard.
What's gratifying is the emails, facebook posts, and yes, even phone calls from people telling you they finished the book and loved it. One friend took it on vacation to the British Virgin Islands and left it there in the lending bookcase at the pier. How cool is that?
And it really is wonderful to walk into a public library in, say, Farmington, and to be welcomed by a very nice librarian named, say, Hal Bright, who offers you a cozy corner to set up and a bottle of water and even joins in the talk when another dozen or so brave the monsoon rains and come to learn about your book. THAT's what keeps this writer's heart beating.
Doing marketing yourself after self-publishing is even better. You have to do it yourself, and therefore, no one wants to talk to you. As if the beating bloody heart you just offered is diseased somehow. So no, thanks anyway. We'll wait until you're famous and have a marketing department pushing your book on us. Which we will then complain about too. Because we never get any say about what we sell. Duh.
So, it's hard.
What's gratifying is the emails, facebook posts, and yes, even phone calls from people telling you they finished the book and loved it. One friend took it on vacation to the British Virgin Islands and left it there in the lending bookcase at the pier. How cool is that?
And it really is wonderful to walk into a public library in, say, Farmington, and to be welcomed by a very nice librarian named, say, Hal Bright, who offers you a cozy corner to set up and a bottle of water and even joins in the talk when another dozen or so brave the monsoon rains and come to learn about your book. THAT's what keeps this writer's heart beating.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Attracting readers
That's what we do when we market our books - try to get the story out to readers. It's why we write, yes? To share the stories of the characters that live in our minds and hearts? So if our objective is to make money, then I can't relate to that. Obviously, one would welcome the call from Oprah and a place on the New York Times bestseller list. But if that's why you write, then I wonder how involved your heart can be.
There's a place for genre writing: take the recipe or formula of the romance novel or mystery, and apply it to a set of characters and a time/place that provides a "hook" of some kind. And then, crank 'em out.
For me, the focus is about writing the kind of book I like to read, and then finding a way to share my excitement about it with others. Without sounding like the biggest egomaniac ever, it's hard to strike the right balance when you want to encourage people to read your book, share their enthusiasm (but not the actual book) with others, and help spread the word. The best thing is the word of mouth from readers who post comments or reviews that attract others to pick up the book.
Why read this, even? Is the constant struggle of a self-published author of interest to anyone? I hope it is. Writing a blog feels alot like being in therapy, without the feedback from the shrink in the chair. It IS all about me, and how I feel. And how much I need you to like my book (and therefore, me). Yikes! Time to stop now!!!
There's a place for genre writing: take the recipe or formula of the romance novel or mystery, and apply it to a set of characters and a time/place that provides a "hook" of some kind. And then, crank 'em out.
For me, the focus is about writing the kind of book I like to read, and then finding a way to share my excitement about it with others. Without sounding like the biggest egomaniac ever, it's hard to strike the right balance when you want to encourage people to read your book, share their enthusiasm (but not the actual book) with others, and help spread the word. The best thing is the word of mouth from readers who post comments or reviews that attract others to pick up the book.
Why read this, even? Is the constant struggle of a self-published author of interest to anyone? I hope it is. Writing a blog feels alot like being in therapy, without the feedback from the shrink in the chair. It IS all about me, and how I feel. And how much I need you to like my book (and therefore, me). Yikes! Time to stop now!!!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
On the beach
Seems that In Flight has taken off at the beach, which is really fitting. So many people are reporting that they have read the book on vacation, although there are a few that haven't been able to wait that long. If you're heading to a relaxing place, take it with you (even to re-read). It's a good beach read, if I do say so myself.
A really pivotal scene takes place on the beach....and quite a bit of the book was written there, including the last 100 pages....so the vibes are right for a satisfying read. I started the book way back in the early 1990s, and wrote on and off during our annual trips to Turkey. Much of what I wrote in those days is in longhand in sturdy black notebooks. The vagaries of electrical power made working on a laptop a bit of a risk there, and the practice of writing by hand seemed to work better for me.
Later, when I was roaring through the last version, I took a week and went to Naples, FL, to the retirement home of my friends Beverly and Jack Bain. During that week alone at the beach, I wrote the ending, read 4 other books, walked, swam, and relaxed. It was the best time! I wish I could do it again as I reach the same point in my new book.
So, readers, let the novel transport you to another country, whether you're sitting on a beach in Cape Cod, Maine, Rhode Island, or somewhere more exotic, say a cruise around the Greek Islands. Enjoy!
A really pivotal scene takes place on the beach....and quite a bit of the book was written there, including the last 100 pages....so the vibes are right for a satisfying read. I started the book way back in the early 1990s, and wrote on and off during our annual trips to Turkey. Much of what I wrote in those days is in longhand in sturdy black notebooks. The vagaries of electrical power made working on a laptop a bit of a risk there, and the practice of writing by hand seemed to work better for me.
Later, when I was roaring through the last version, I took a week and went to Naples, FL, to the retirement home of my friends Beverly and Jack Bain. During that week alone at the beach, I wrote the ending, read 4 other books, walked, swam, and relaxed. It was the best time! I wish I could do it again as I reach the same point in my new book.
So, readers, let the novel transport you to another country, whether you're sitting on a beach in Cape Cod, Maine, Rhode Island, or somewhere more exotic, say a cruise around the Greek Islands. Enjoy!
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Lesson
Here's an excerpt from In Flight that shows the relationship between Marta and her mother.
Marta’s mother had lined them up every morning for the daily inspection, checking for clean hands, freshly tied headscarves, and minty breath. Sometimes one had a crumb or a dollop of toothpaste briskly removed with the corner of her apron, dabbed in spit. A lock of hair would be tucked in, a scarf retied with head-squeezing precision while a stream of praise and admonitions came from Mother’s nervous lips. Marta had no idea if they were still alive, her parents, and what had happened to the sisters who once followed her like matryoshka dolls, each garbed in a similar colorful combination of skirts and scarves and scrubbed faces. They grew up together, her mother like an older sister at times, and remembering this, Marta felt bereft for the first time in years.
She closed her eyes, and a scene played out like a movie behind them, as vivid as yesterday, the smells and tastes causing her mouth to water a bit.
Day after day, they had followed the same routine. It was a hard life, and they kept inside a very small circle, with no television or radio to bring outside influences into their quiet home. As Marta got older, she started to fight it, to fight her parents and the oppression of their narrow lives. Sitting in the park now, in the twenty-first century, the afternoon sun warming her face, Marta shivered as she recalled the first time she challenged her mother.
Every afternoon, they returned home from school to Mother’s eager greeting. She would greedily empty Marta’s books onto the table. By the time Marta had shrugged off her coat and poured a warming cup of tea, Mother would be examining the papers dumped from the book bag. She was short and thin with angular bones in her face and dark chestnut hair covered by a flowered scarf tucked behind the ears and knotted loosely under her chin. Mother always wore a floral-print housedress that clashed badly with the scarf, but she rarely noticed her appearance. Marta often shuddered at the thought that she would grow up to look the same way, and it bothered her, not because her mother was unattractive, but because Marta was fearful of living the same life. All the girls were smothered in some way by the force of their mother’s personality, her neediness. She yearned for education and had taught herself along with her eldest child to read, write, and perform mathematics, all of it without the knowledge of her husband, and all the time pushing Marta to excel.
Watching her mother that night, Marta had reached up and pulled off the bland paisley scarf that covered her own hair and for good measure loosened the braid twisted at the back of her head.
As expected, the reaction was shock and disapproval.
“Why did you do that?” Mother demanded. “We’re going to have to fix it before your father gets home, you know.”
She snapped her finger at Marta’s hairline in a stinging rebuke. Shaking her head, she pushed the math book toward Marta and opened her notebook. Marta hitched her feet in the rungs of the chair and took a long sip of tea.
“I don’t have any math homework today. We had a test,” Marta announced.
“Well, let’s review the test and go over the material for tomorrow,” Mother pushed.
Marta thrust her lower lip out stubbornly. “I don’t need to review. I got a one hundred.”
The four sisters looked up from their books at the change they heard in Marta’s voice. Mother started fussing about ungrateful children and back talk, and Marta held the glass of tea and fixed a stare at her through the steam. As usual, Mother’s speech ended up with the importance of education and the sacrifices she made for her girls.
“Why is it so important that I go to school?” Marta asked, for probably the hundredth time. “Father thinks that it is a waste of time.” Red-faced, her mother ignored the question and started turning the pages in the math book.
“Let’s go to work,” she said. Marta sighed. It must have been the thousandth time she’d heard that announcement sitting at this table, and she rose to refill her cup of tea. Turning back to the table, Marta picked up a history book and sat down.
“You go ahead and study the math,” she said. “If you have any questions, you can ask me. I need to memorize this history chapter.” Marta avoided her mother’s face but felt her sister’s sharp kick under the table. Mother sat quietly looking at the math book for a long time, and the girls read in silence until little Nilgun—always curled in the window keeping watch on the street—yelled that their father was coming.
The books were swept aside as Marta hurriedly tied her hair back and pulled on the headscarf. She was laying out the silverware when Sevgi poked her hard in the ribs. Marta grabbed her arm, and Sevgi hissed, “Why are you being so nasty to Mother? Would it kill you to teach her that math?”
“You teach it to her,” Marta said as she released her arm.
“She doesn’t want to study with me, stupid, just you. She’s not interested in learning the same stuff over again. She only wants to study with you.” Sevgi turned back to the table as Father opened the door and greeted the family with a grunt. He went to the sink to wash up, and the evening ritual began. Marta sat quietly during dinner, absorbed and confused by the sudden surge of power that she felt over her mother.
Father rose from the table and left for his evening of bridge at the café down the street. The table was cleared and the dishes washed as usual. Mother pulled the history book from the pantry and sat down to quiz Marta on the dates. Her eyes sparkled each time Marta missed an answer, and Marta in turn challenged her mother to answer them without the book. Sevgi took the text, and the two began to match wits against each other.
The teapot hissed and jiggled in the background. Faces flushed from the competition, mother and daughter drank from the hot glasses until the little girls fell asleep and were carried to bed. Marta returned to the kitchen and, without speaking, opened the math book and began to work the problems with her mother.
Their relationship changed that day, Marta knew. Someday, Marta could leave and have her own life. While she still lived at home, she vowed to do what she could to help her mother improve herself. Maybe she, too, could find a way to have a better life. Education was the key for both of them, and Marta never again asked why she needed it, never again gave her father the power to veto her options.
Marta’s mother had lined them up every morning for the daily inspection, checking for clean hands, freshly tied headscarves, and minty breath. Sometimes one had a crumb or a dollop of toothpaste briskly removed with the corner of her apron, dabbed in spit. A lock of hair would be tucked in, a scarf retied with head-squeezing precision while a stream of praise and admonitions came from Mother’s nervous lips. Marta had no idea if they were still alive, her parents, and what had happened to the sisters who once followed her like matryoshka dolls, each garbed in a similar colorful combination of skirts and scarves and scrubbed faces. They grew up together, her mother like an older sister at times, and remembering this, Marta felt bereft for the first time in years.
She closed her eyes, and a scene played out like a movie behind them, as vivid as yesterday, the smells and tastes causing her mouth to water a bit.
Day after day, they had followed the same routine. It was a hard life, and they kept inside a very small circle, with no television or radio to bring outside influences into their quiet home. As Marta got older, she started to fight it, to fight her parents and the oppression of their narrow lives. Sitting in the park now, in the twenty-first century, the afternoon sun warming her face, Marta shivered as she recalled the first time she challenged her mother.
Every afternoon, they returned home from school to Mother’s eager greeting. She would greedily empty Marta’s books onto the table. By the time Marta had shrugged off her coat and poured a warming cup of tea, Mother would be examining the papers dumped from the book bag. She was short and thin with angular bones in her face and dark chestnut hair covered by a flowered scarf tucked behind the ears and knotted loosely under her chin. Mother always wore a floral-print housedress that clashed badly with the scarf, but she rarely noticed her appearance. Marta often shuddered at the thought that she would grow up to look the same way, and it bothered her, not because her mother was unattractive, but because Marta was fearful of living the same life. All the girls were smothered in some way by the force of their mother’s personality, her neediness. She yearned for education and had taught herself along with her eldest child to read, write, and perform mathematics, all of it without the knowledge of her husband, and all the time pushing Marta to excel.
Watching her mother that night, Marta had reached up and pulled off the bland paisley scarf that covered her own hair and for good measure loosened the braid twisted at the back of her head.
As expected, the reaction was shock and disapproval.
“Why did you do that?” Mother demanded. “We’re going to have to fix it before your father gets home, you know.”
She snapped her finger at Marta’s hairline in a stinging rebuke. Shaking her head, she pushed the math book toward Marta and opened her notebook. Marta hitched her feet in the rungs of the chair and took a long sip of tea.
“I don’t have any math homework today. We had a test,” Marta announced.
“Well, let’s review the test and go over the material for tomorrow,” Mother pushed.
Marta thrust her lower lip out stubbornly. “I don’t need to review. I got a one hundred.”
The four sisters looked up from their books at the change they heard in Marta’s voice. Mother started fussing about ungrateful children and back talk, and Marta held the glass of tea and fixed a stare at her through the steam. As usual, Mother’s speech ended up with the importance of education and the sacrifices she made for her girls.
“Why is it so important that I go to school?” Marta asked, for probably the hundredth time. “Father thinks that it is a waste of time.” Red-faced, her mother ignored the question and started turning the pages in the math book.
“Let’s go to work,” she said. Marta sighed. It must have been the thousandth time she’d heard that announcement sitting at this table, and she rose to refill her cup of tea. Turning back to the table, Marta picked up a history book and sat down.
“You go ahead and study the math,” she said. “If you have any questions, you can ask me. I need to memorize this history chapter.” Marta avoided her mother’s face but felt her sister’s sharp kick under the table. Mother sat quietly looking at the math book for a long time, and the girls read in silence until little Nilgun—always curled in the window keeping watch on the street—yelled that their father was coming.
The books were swept aside as Marta hurriedly tied her hair back and pulled on the headscarf. She was laying out the silverware when Sevgi poked her hard in the ribs. Marta grabbed her arm, and Sevgi hissed, “Why are you being so nasty to Mother? Would it kill you to teach her that math?”
“You teach it to her,” Marta said as she released her arm.
“She doesn’t want to study with me, stupid, just you. She’s not interested in learning the same stuff over again. She only wants to study with you.” Sevgi turned back to the table as Father opened the door and greeted the family with a grunt. He went to the sink to wash up, and the evening ritual began. Marta sat quietly during dinner, absorbed and confused by the sudden surge of power that she felt over her mother.
Father rose from the table and left for his evening of bridge at the café down the street. The table was cleared and the dishes washed as usual. Mother pulled the history book from the pantry and sat down to quiz Marta on the dates. Her eyes sparkled each time Marta missed an answer, and Marta in turn challenged her mother to answer them without the book. Sevgi took the text, and the two began to match wits against each other.
The teapot hissed and jiggled in the background. Faces flushed from the competition, mother and daughter drank from the hot glasses until the little girls fell asleep and were carried to bed. Marta returned to the kitchen and, without speaking, opened the math book and began to work the problems with her mother.
Their relationship changed that day, Marta knew. Someday, Marta could leave and have her own life. While she still lived at home, she vowed to do what she could to help her mother improve herself. Maybe she, too, could find a way to have a better life. Education was the key for both of them, and Marta never again asked why she needed it, never again gave her father the power to veto her options.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Writing sample
Here's chapter one for your enjoyment:
Shortly after boarding the plane, a glass of single-malt whiskey on its way to her hand, Marta had been disturbed to discover the seat next to her was about to be occupied by a nervous—shaking actually—and extremely elderly gentleman. “I was upgraded,” he said, waving his boarding pass in Marta’s direction. “My first time on an airplane, and I get first class.”
“That’s nice,” she murmured, turning to look out the window while he stored his bag and jacket in the overhead compartment. Marta watched her own reflection in the glass, eyes falling in and out of focus, gazing sometimes at the scurrying airport personnel below and sometimes at herself, a woman who did not look her age at thirty-six. She had thick dark hair and slightly oriental, almond-shaped green eyes that were fringed with dark lashes under the curve of well-turned eyebrows and bracketed by sharp cheekbones covered with taut, unwrinkled skin. She flew weekly, sometimes more than once or even twice a week, some trips lasting less than a day. Always flying first class, she was a longtime member of the million-mile club—and the mile-high club, for that matter. She raised her eyebrow slightly when Denise, one of her favorites on the European circuit, leaned in to refresh her drink.
“Sorry, we’re booked solid today. You won’t be able to spread out this trip.”
Marta frowned and sipped her drink. It was bad enough that she was bound for Istanbul, a place she’d left a lifetime ago. Now she was forced to share her trip with an elderly seatmate who insisted on referring to it as Constantinople, despite almost a hundred years of being known in the world with the Turkish rather than Greek designation on maps. Although she’d vowed never to set foot in that country again, a series of mishaps had landed her in this seat on a first-class rocket to the past to discuss none other than the international trade in pasta.
“Pasta?” asked the constant Constantinopler.
“Precisely,” she replied, snapping open her laptop to circumvent further discussion of the topic at hand. After one partner contracted malaria (in New York City, no less, so who knew where that malady came from?), another had a skiing accident (this mishap taking place on the slopes in Vermont, but in early May, making it also suspect to Marta), and then the third and fourth were taken off the case to assist with the defense of an illegal nanny and gardener discovered working sans papers in the household of the firm’s managing partner, well, it seemed that the planets had finally aligned themselves in such a way to compel Marta’s return to Turkey.
“Short and sweet,” she told the travel agent. “I want to get in there, do the deal, and get the hell out as soon as possible.”
Marta was particularly rattled—and she never became rattled, particularly or not—by the prospect of returning to her homeland, a place she’d not seen since she left in 1985, at the tender age of twenty-one. Her colleagues were always vague about where Marta came from, although if pressed, the senior partners knew that she had arrived in their offices with a passport from Turkey, the ink barely dry on her Turkish law degree and the master’s from Columbia Law School. After a while, in typical New York fashion, no one cared where she came from, including her.
New York was the perfect place to get lost, to reinvent oneself, to make a new history. This was precisely what Marta had done. And now, all because of a stupid legal tangle over pasta that was verging on an international incident, Marta was going back there.
“Book me in the newest hotel you can find,” she told her secretary. “Schedule all the meetings there and make these guys come to me.”
Marta was notorious for her liaisons with young associates, something that made her male partners uncomfortable and alienated her from the female staff. Marta viewed sex in the same way she followed a regular schedule of exercise—it was something necessary to keep her body functioning at its optimal level. Over the years, as she remade herself into the stereotypical tough New York lawyer, Marta had limited her emotional contacts until the only true devotion she allowed was to her physical trainer. She’d previously almost considered her hairdresser a friend, until the woman moved upstate without a word of warning. So much for friends.
While her intention for the trip was good—staying in a new hotel that would have no associations with the past—Marta would end up conducting the pasta negotiations in a spectacular, curved edifice overlooking the Bosporus, smack in the middle of the park in which she played as a child with a view not only of the legendary seaway but also the crowded slums of her youth. Oh progress, that decided to make a tourist destination from a decrepit villa and its bramble-ridden grounds! Oh fate, how it conspired to return Marta to a room with such a view, with only a pane of glass to insulate her from the smells and sounds of her past!
Mr. Vasilli Vassilios was not willing to recognize that Marta had no intention of engaging him in conversation for the duration of the nine-hour plane trip. When the plane reached its cruising altitude and people started to move around, Vasilli decided to try again.
“I need an attorney when I arrive,” he said. “Can you give me the name of someone?”
Marta’s hands stilled over the keyboard. “I don’t know anyone in Istanbul,” she said. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to find one.”
He looked pointedly at the legal papers entrapped in her briefcase.
Not being prone to feelings of embarrassment, even when caught in such an obvious falsehood, Marta smoothly continued, “The people my office deals with are all corporate lawyers. Believe me, they would know less than I do about handling a personal matter,” she said.
“I see,” he said. He nodded sadly and then put a gnarled hand over hers. “My brother just passed away, and I have been summoned to settle his estate.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.” She counted to herself and focused on breathing. Why was she letting this old man interfere with her trip? “Mr. Vassilios,” she continued, “I really need to get some work done. If you’ll excuse me …”
“I haven’t seen my brother since we were children,” Vasilli said. “Now I’m the only one left. Can you believe it? All those years, children, maybe grandchildren even, and now, they call me. Look at me. I am an old man. But I guess I have to go back there.”
Marta closed her eyes again. Vasilli’s voice rambled, becoming soft and then, once or twice, guttural Greek sounds broke into the story like punctuation marks. It was hard not to be drawn into his tale, although at one point, she looked over at him. “What year did you say that was?” she asked.
“Around 1922, I guess,” he replied.
“Just how old are you?” Marta marveled, turning to look at him for the first time. Up close like this, his cheeks resembled a photo of the Grand Canyon or a close-up of an elephant hide with some bristling hairs scattered over deep crevasses. It was a face that carried scars of more than eighty years of hard living. Watery brown eyes peered into hers, shaded by short but thick eyelashes and brows like two caterpillars readying for battle. His hair still sported more pepper than salt, especially the crop erupting from his ears and the tip of his prominent nose.
“Older than dirt,” he replied. “Older than this republic, that’s for sure. I was born at the end of the first war, in 1918. The Ottomans had backed the losers, the Kaiser, and everything started to fall apart for them in the next few years.
“We left, me and my father; we boarded a ship for America. My brother and mother stayed behind, waiting for Baba to send for them. We didn’t have the money for everyone to make the trip. Yurgos stayed with Mama, since he was a bit older and could work … He must have been ten or so, since I was about five at that time. Yes, he was old enough to help out.
“That was the last time I saw them, on the docks. We were in the boat. It seemed like we sailed for a year, but I suppose it was not so long. Baba was very sad, and then he became ill, but we both made it to America. But things happened during the war, I guess. The Greek families were moved out—relocated, is what they say now—and after that, we could not find my mother. And there was no word from my brother until now, this notice I received, you see? How did they find me after so many years when we could not find them?
“The letters all came back, you see, and when we finally heard from the others, my aunts and uncles, they were in Greece, in Thessaloníki, and they did not know where Mama had gone … They said to Baba, ‘Oh, we thought she was with you,’ and he was so angry. That was the end, he said. No more family. It was just the two of us.”
Marta picked up the onionskin papers, authenticated with a single gold seal and obviously typed on a manual machine with a thin ribbon that wrinkled occasionally and spit out a word or two in red. There was an elaborate but unreadable scrawl on the bottom of the page, in a style that Marta recognized from her youth, when all the college students—especially the males—worked hard to create a signature to match the elaborate style of the Ottomans. Her own still contained elements of this fashion.
“How did they find you?” she asked, more to herself than to the old man blowing his nose loudly into a frayed white handkerchief embroidered in the corner with interlocking blue Vs.
She could still read the Turkish, but she checked it against the second page, a bad English translation. She thought the signer would be a place to start, but she did not say it out loud. No way was Marta getting pulled into this old man’s miniseries, his histrionics, his Greek tragedy. No way. If anyone’s past life qualified for coverage in Soap Opera Digest, it was hers—and she had long ago changed to the Law Review and the New Yorker. She had no desire to go rooting around in personal history—her own or anybody else’s.
“Is this all there was?” she asked. He nodded. “Where is the envelope?”
He pulled it silently from his breast pocket. There was no return address, and the postage mark was badly smeared. The stamps bore the familiar visage of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic, and the address had been typed on the same machine as the letter, so that the “West” and both of the “Yorks” were red.
“Vasilli Vassilios. 384 West End Avenue, New York, New York. Hmm, good address,” she said. “What do you do for a living?”
“Retired,” he replied. And then, after a pause, he filled in the blanks. “Coffee shop, Seventy-second Street. Closed down last year when rents went up too high.
“I have no children, my wife is dead, and there is no one else, and now this. But I figured, what should I do? I can ignore it, or I can make one last trip. So I might find out what happened to my mother and my brother. And maybe there is more family there. Who knows? I can see.”
“Yes,” Marta agreed. “You can see.”
Vasilli looked at her. “And what about you? You are going to visit family, yes?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t have any contact with them. I’m just going for business.” She absently fingered the locket hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck.
“Surely there is someone,” he persisted.
“No, there is no one I want to see.” She opened the computer. “I’ll try to help you when we get there, but I’m not promising anything.”
Vasilli nodded and closed his eyes, listening to the tapping of her keyboard until he slept.
Shortly after boarding the plane, a glass of single-malt whiskey on its way to her hand, Marta had been disturbed to discover the seat next to her was about to be occupied by a nervous—shaking actually—and extremely elderly gentleman. “I was upgraded,” he said, waving his boarding pass in Marta’s direction. “My first time on an airplane, and I get first class.”
“That’s nice,” she murmured, turning to look out the window while he stored his bag and jacket in the overhead compartment. Marta watched her own reflection in the glass, eyes falling in and out of focus, gazing sometimes at the scurrying airport personnel below and sometimes at herself, a woman who did not look her age at thirty-six. She had thick dark hair and slightly oriental, almond-shaped green eyes that were fringed with dark lashes under the curve of well-turned eyebrows and bracketed by sharp cheekbones covered with taut, unwrinkled skin. She flew weekly, sometimes more than once or even twice a week, some trips lasting less than a day. Always flying first class, she was a longtime member of the million-mile club—and the mile-high club, for that matter. She raised her eyebrow slightly when Denise, one of her favorites on the European circuit, leaned in to refresh her drink.
“Sorry, we’re booked solid today. You won’t be able to spread out this trip.”
Marta frowned and sipped her drink. It was bad enough that she was bound for Istanbul, a place she’d left a lifetime ago. Now she was forced to share her trip with an elderly seatmate who insisted on referring to it as Constantinople, despite almost a hundred years of being known in the world with the Turkish rather than Greek designation on maps. Although she’d vowed never to set foot in that country again, a series of mishaps had landed her in this seat on a first-class rocket to the past to discuss none other than the international trade in pasta.
“Pasta?” asked the constant Constantinopler.
“Precisely,” she replied, snapping open her laptop to circumvent further discussion of the topic at hand. After one partner contracted malaria (in New York City, no less, so who knew where that malady came from?), another had a skiing accident (this mishap taking place on the slopes in Vermont, but in early May, making it also suspect to Marta), and then the third and fourth were taken off the case to assist with the defense of an illegal nanny and gardener discovered working sans papers in the household of the firm’s managing partner, well, it seemed that the planets had finally aligned themselves in such a way to compel Marta’s return to Turkey.
“Short and sweet,” she told the travel agent. “I want to get in there, do the deal, and get the hell out as soon as possible.”
Marta was particularly rattled—and she never became rattled, particularly or not—by the prospect of returning to her homeland, a place she’d not seen since she left in 1985, at the tender age of twenty-one. Her colleagues were always vague about where Marta came from, although if pressed, the senior partners knew that she had arrived in their offices with a passport from Turkey, the ink barely dry on her Turkish law degree and the master’s from Columbia Law School. After a while, in typical New York fashion, no one cared where she came from, including her.
New York was the perfect place to get lost, to reinvent oneself, to make a new history. This was precisely what Marta had done. And now, all because of a stupid legal tangle over pasta that was verging on an international incident, Marta was going back there.
“Book me in the newest hotel you can find,” she told her secretary. “Schedule all the meetings there and make these guys come to me.”
Marta was notorious for her liaisons with young associates, something that made her male partners uncomfortable and alienated her from the female staff. Marta viewed sex in the same way she followed a regular schedule of exercise—it was something necessary to keep her body functioning at its optimal level. Over the years, as she remade herself into the stereotypical tough New York lawyer, Marta had limited her emotional contacts until the only true devotion she allowed was to her physical trainer. She’d previously almost considered her hairdresser a friend, until the woman moved upstate without a word of warning. So much for friends.
While her intention for the trip was good—staying in a new hotel that would have no associations with the past—Marta would end up conducting the pasta negotiations in a spectacular, curved edifice overlooking the Bosporus, smack in the middle of the park in which she played as a child with a view not only of the legendary seaway but also the crowded slums of her youth. Oh progress, that decided to make a tourist destination from a decrepit villa and its bramble-ridden grounds! Oh fate, how it conspired to return Marta to a room with such a view, with only a pane of glass to insulate her from the smells and sounds of her past!
Mr. Vasilli Vassilios was not willing to recognize that Marta had no intention of engaging him in conversation for the duration of the nine-hour plane trip. When the plane reached its cruising altitude and people started to move around, Vasilli decided to try again.
“I need an attorney when I arrive,” he said. “Can you give me the name of someone?”
Marta’s hands stilled over the keyboard. “I don’t know anyone in Istanbul,” she said. “I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to find one.”
He looked pointedly at the legal papers entrapped in her briefcase.
Not being prone to feelings of embarrassment, even when caught in such an obvious falsehood, Marta smoothly continued, “The people my office deals with are all corporate lawyers. Believe me, they would know less than I do about handling a personal matter,” she said.
“I see,” he said. He nodded sadly and then put a gnarled hand over hers. “My brother just passed away, and I have been summoned to settle his estate.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.” She counted to herself and focused on breathing. Why was she letting this old man interfere with her trip? “Mr. Vassilios,” she continued, “I really need to get some work done. If you’ll excuse me …”
“I haven’t seen my brother since we were children,” Vasilli said. “Now I’m the only one left. Can you believe it? All those years, children, maybe grandchildren even, and now, they call me. Look at me. I am an old man. But I guess I have to go back there.”
Marta closed her eyes again. Vasilli’s voice rambled, becoming soft and then, once or twice, guttural Greek sounds broke into the story like punctuation marks. It was hard not to be drawn into his tale, although at one point, she looked over at him. “What year did you say that was?” she asked.
“Around 1922, I guess,” he replied.
“Just how old are you?” Marta marveled, turning to look at him for the first time. Up close like this, his cheeks resembled a photo of the Grand Canyon or a close-up of an elephant hide with some bristling hairs scattered over deep crevasses. It was a face that carried scars of more than eighty years of hard living. Watery brown eyes peered into hers, shaded by short but thick eyelashes and brows like two caterpillars readying for battle. His hair still sported more pepper than salt, especially the crop erupting from his ears and the tip of his prominent nose.
“Older than dirt,” he replied. “Older than this republic, that’s for sure. I was born at the end of the first war, in 1918. The Ottomans had backed the losers, the Kaiser, and everything started to fall apart for them in the next few years.
“We left, me and my father; we boarded a ship for America. My brother and mother stayed behind, waiting for Baba to send for them. We didn’t have the money for everyone to make the trip. Yurgos stayed with Mama, since he was a bit older and could work … He must have been ten or so, since I was about five at that time. Yes, he was old enough to help out.
“That was the last time I saw them, on the docks. We were in the boat. It seemed like we sailed for a year, but I suppose it was not so long. Baba was very sad, and then he became ill, but we both made it to America. But things happened during the war, I guess. The Greek families were moved out—relocated, is what they say now—and after that, we could not find my mother. And there was no word from my brother until now, this notice I received, you see? How did they find me after so many years when we could not find them?
“The letters all came back, you see, and when we finally heard from the others, my aunts and uncles, they were in Greece, in Thessaloníki, and they did not know where Mama had gone … They said to Baba, ‘Oh, we thought she was with you,’ and he was so angry. That was the end, he said. No more family. It was just the two of us.”
Marta picked up the onionskin papers, authenticated with a single gold seal and obviously typed on a manual machine with a thin ribbon that wrinkled occasionally and spit out a word or two in red. There was an elaborate but unreadable scrawl on the bottom of the page, in a style that Marta recognized from her youth, when all the college students—especially the males—worked hard to create a signature to match the elaborate style of the Ottomans. Her own still contained elements of this fashion.
“How did they find you?” she asked, more to herself than to the old man blowing his nose loudly into a frayed white handkerchief embroidered in the corner with interlocking blue Vs.
She could still read the Turkish, but she checked it against the second page, a bad English translation. She thought the signer would be a place to start, but she did not say it out loud. No way was Marta getting pulled into this old man’s miniseries, his histrionics, his Greek tragedy. No way. If anyone’s past life qualified for coverage in Soap Opera Digest, it was hers—and she had long ago changed to the Law Review and the New Yorker. She had no desire to go rooting around in personal history—her own or anybody else’s.
“Is this all there was?” she asked. He nodded. “Where is the envelope?”
He pulled it silently from his breast pocket. There was no return address, and the postage mark was badly smeared. The stamps bore the familiar visage of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic, and the address had been typed on the same machine as the letter, so that the “West” and both of the “Yorks” were red.
“Vasilli Vassilios. 384 West End Avenue, New York, New York. Hmm, good address,” she said. “What do you do for a living?”
“Retired,” he replied. And then, after a pause, he filled in the blanks. “Coffee shop, Seventy-second Street. Closed down last year when rents went up too high.
“I have no children, my wife is dead, and there is no one else, and now this. But I figured, what should I do? I can ignore it, or I can make one last trip. So I might find out what happened to my mother and my brother. And maybe there is more family there. Who knows? I can see.”
“Yes,” Marta agreed. “You can see.”
Vasilli looked at her. “And what about you? You are going to visit family, yes?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t have any contact with them. I’m just going for business.” She absently fingered the locket hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck.
“Surely there is someone,” he persisted.
“No, there is no one I want to see.” She opened the computer. “I’ll try to help you when we get there, but I’m not promising anything.”
Vasilli nodded and closed his eyes, listening to the tapping of her keyboard until he slept.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)