Liberation Movements

Katja

On a rack in the lobby of the Pera Palas I find a tourist map that I study just outside the front door, in the hot light. Hotels and restaurants are marked by childish hand-drawn icons of roofs. At the bottom, beyond the Galata Bridge that crosses the Golden Horn where it flows from the Bosphorus, and through a tangle of ancient streets, is a comical roof marked SULTAN INN, a block north of the Sea of Marmara, which they call Marmara Denizi.

This is my first time outside, under the Turkish sun. A line of dirty cars pushes by, and pedestrians wander in all directions. In other circumstances, I would be thrilled just to stand here.

As Brano told me, the Union Church is only two blocks away, straight from the hotel, up an alley, across Istiklal Caddesi, full of overpriced shops and multilingual tourists, then down another alley to where a small sign points me to a door in an ancient wall. As it also houses the Dutch consulate, a guard asks my nationality. I tell him and ask for the church. With a smile, he points me up a cobbled path inside.

It’s a small, modest place, in some ways similar to the Catholic chapel in Pacin, where I grew up. Since moving to the Capital years ago, I’ve found myself reluctant to return to see my family. Perhaps it’s just an aspect of growing up, but when I do return and walk with Mother arm in arm past that chapel, I always feel as if I’m visiting another country. I told this once to Aron, but he didn’t understand. He snorted under his breath, pulled up his sheet, and turned off the bedroom light.

The inner walls of the Union Church are rough, striped by slender bricks, and only two people sit in the pews, far from each other. I spot an old man dusting the pulpit with a feathered brush. He looks up when I approach.

“Evet?”

“Father Janssen,” I say.

He frowns, then speaks in labored English. “I do not know Janssen, a father.”

My English is just as labored. “Is priest here?”

He considers this, and it’s one of those moments when I’m pleased to be a woman because I present no threat. “Come,” he says, and leads me back to the front. Above our heads, over the entrance, is a second floor filled with an old pipe organ. The cleaner leads me upstairs to the dim floor, where a black-suited priest is reading a book laid on the organ keys. He looks up. “Evet?”

The cleaner says a few words in Dutch that I can’t make out, though I can tell that this priest’s name is Van der Berg. Then the cleaner says, “Janssen,” and the priest’s eyes light up. He nods for the old man to leave as he smiles at me. He doesn’t speak until the cleaner is visible again over the railing, headed for the altar.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

I close my eyes, trying to remember. “Is the harvest come down on the mountains?”

Van der Berg bites his lip, then lowers his voice and speaks in my language. “It has indeed, my child. A moment.”

Beneath a stained-glass window is a low bookshelf filled with twenty leather-bound books. He peers back down the length of the chapel, then pulls out a book called Sygdommen til Doden and opens it.

Just like in the movies, I think.

It’s a hollowed-out book, containing a silk-wrapped package that he hands to me. I unwrap it and look at the small Turkish MKE pistol, 380 caliber, not unlike the Walther PPs I used for practice in the Militia Academy.

“There are seven,” he whispers, tapping the handle. “Will you need more?”

“What?”

“Cartridges. Do you need more than seven?”

I shake my head.

He holds out his hand. “Please. The scarf.”

I give him the silk scarf and put the gun into my handbag.

“Is there anything else?”

I hesitate, looking into his kindly face, trying to think. Maybe some direction, that’s something I could use, but that’s not why he’s here.

He smiles. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

I blink.

“Just remember, maintain your calm. And afterward, get rid of it.”

“Here?”

“No, silly girl. The Bosphorus. I don’t know how many guns that waterway has swallowed.”

“I see.”

The priest glances back again at the empty pews, then says in a high whisper, “For the victory of the world’s proletariat!”

“Of course,” I mutter, then turn to go.

The map helps. It takes me up Istiklal Caddesi to an underground train, the Tunel, which brings me down to the Galata Bridge. I cross on foot. Men line the railing clutching fishing poles. Then I’m making my way through hot, narrow streets, ignoring voices- Hello pretty lady; Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Finally, I reach Mustafa Pasa, a busy avenue choked with shops selling bronze sculptures and carpets and food.

The Sultan Inn is unassuming and run-down, not the kind of place I expect to find an officer of the Ministry for State Security. Or maybe I’m just inexperienced (which I am) and naive (which I may be). The lobby is dark, not made for the world’s tourists, but the bald desk clerk in the sweat-stained undershirt is smiling broadly at me. “Heh- low, ” he says.

I’ve already made a mistake. Walking inside only announces my presence. So I give him a confused expression and step backward across the cracked tiles. “Sorry. Wrong address.”

He shrugs as if it’s an opportunity missed.

Across the street I buy coffee from a street vendor and sip it beside a carpet shop. Passersby bump into me, and the occasional beggar demands things with open hands. It’s five o’clock, and the low-lying sun at the end of the street makes me flush.

“Madam,” says a shriveled old man. “You are lost?”

I shake my head and turn away.

“Can I be of assistance, perhaps? Show you Istanbul?”

I give him my Militia stare. The one where you momentarily separate from your body and display the full force of your scorn. “Leave me alone.”

It works as well here as it does back home-the old man moves on-but the Militia stare is only a facade. I’m having trouble focusing on the faces in the street. What would Aron do now? We’ve traveled together to Krakow and the Black Sea, and he knows how to take care of me when I stumble like this.

He would put his arm around my shoulders and guide me to a cafe where the time could settle down again. Blurred faces surge toward me, and I know that if Peter Husak comes I won’t even see him.

I step into the carpet shop to catch my breath, but suddenly two salesmen are on me. “The lovely madam, so very proud we are that such a lovely madam is interested in our carpets!”

I rub my face. “No.”

“Original Turkish, handwoven. Touch!”

“A taxi,” I say. “Please. Just call a taxi for me.”