“Did he build the school?”
“No,” said Murat. “His son Bayezid did.”
“Bayezid,” repeated William, slightly mispronouncing the name, the influence of his mother’s American accent showing.
“Bayezid the Peaceful,” added Murat, and his clear pronunciation served as a subtle rebuke to his son.
The story, or at least the version recounted by Murat, was that when Bayezid inherited his empire he took it upon himself to revitalize the city after his father’s bloody conquest nearly destroyed it. To understand his new capital Bayezid would roam the streets disguised as an ordinary citizen. On one of these secret walks he found himself in a garden filled with red and yellow roses. A young man in simple dress who had a reputation for great wisdom tended the garden. After Bayezid revealed his identity, he asked how to improve his empire and its capital. The gardener advised the sultan to educate his people and explained that his own wisdom had come through quiet contemplation among his roses. He then suggested that Bayezid build a school there, which the sultan did. The gardener became the first headmaster and administered Galatasaray Lisesi until his death.
Murat could see the roses. They still grew just beyond the gate.
“How did the gardener die?” William asked.
“Like his father, Bayezid turned to conquest as he grew older. At the sultan’s request the loyal gardener—now the headmaster—recruited his students to become soldiers. He then led them in a campaign for Bayezid and died in one of the battles.”
“And Bayezid, did he die in the battle?”
“No,” answered Murat, “he died some years later.”
“How?”
“He had a son, and that son betrayed him.”
Murat stared out into the garden. His eyes shifted from the broad Corinthian columns flanking the entrance of the lise, to the sturdy masonry of its three wings, to the terra-cotta-shingled roof and, finally, to the cobblestone footpaths lined with benches where students reclined against their backpacks reading books that were flapped open across their chests like flightless birds.
“This must be the most expensive building on the İstiklal,” announced William, as if solving the riddle that his father had laid before him.
Murat smiled at his son but absently. When he was with the boy he felt both burdened and unburdened at once. To prepare William for an unkind world, he needed to be firm. But he also needed to equip him with the reservoirs of approval and affection that would sustain him against the same unkind world. His responsibilities as a father conflicted with one another. He could love the boy too much, or he could love the boy not enough. If a tension existed between Murat and his son, it was a reflection of these two conflicting impulses, and Murat believed that this tension, which dogged him, was also the proof that he was a good father. Anything aside from tension was a failure. He took an appraising, final look at the lise.
“I’m not certain that you’re right,” he told his son. “The lise would never be for sale. I guess you would say that it is priceless.”
“But that means it is the most expensive,” said William.
“Perhaps,” Murat answered. “When the value of a thing exceeds an amount that money can capture, that’s when it becomes priceless, but, of course, this can also mean that something is merely worthless.” Then Murat scooped up his son, who looped his arms around his father’s neck. As he carried William the last two blocks to school, Murat noticed the time and nearly broke into a run. Waiting on a leather sofa in his office was a lawyer who had come to see him about the football stadium and who billed one thousand lira per hour. Murat did the math in his head as he hurried down the İstiklal. He would be at least thirty minutes late, so five hundred lira. Try as he might, he could not help but calculate what this morning with his son had cost him.
* * *
William rests his head on his mother’s shoulder and watches the city unspool as they return from the party: dark side streets interrupted by channels of bright wet filth, the moon’s white reflection brushed across the ambling current of the Bosphorus, the bridges with their spans studded in lights. Catherine types furiously, grasping her phone with both hands, as if she’s captured a snake by its neck. Her expression is drawn, strained and afraid. William shuts his eyes. He tries to sleep.
The clanging house gate slowly rolls open. William sits up and Catherine tucks her phone back into her folded black silk blazer. The taxi pulls along the curved driveway. Murat stands waiting under the arch of a white colonnade that leads to the front door. His look is heavy, a mix of worry and anger, as vacant as the bronze sentries William had observed outside the walls of Dolmabahçe Palace. Gravel crunches beneath the taxi’s wheels. Then they stop.
The driver announces the fare. But before Catherine can pay, Murat has opened the driver’s door, as if he might drag him out from behind the steering wheel. Instead, he drops a hundred-lira note in the man’s lap. Murat then opens the back door. He grabs his wife just above the elbow and pulls her onto the driveway. Catherine reaches after William, but Murat swats her arm away and hoists the boy from his seat.
William lunges for his mother. Murat lifts William by the waist and then plants him like a stake in the ground. Then he snatches both of their wrists and leads them inside. The last thing William hears before the front door shuts behind them is the taxi’s wheels churning at the gravel as the driver speeds out to the street.
All of the lights are on in the marble foyer. A porcelain blue-and-white temple jar filled with white orchids rests on a mahogany center table. The table is aligned beneath a crystal chandelier and the house smells heavily of cigarettes and flowers. Murat stands with his wife on one side of him and his son on the other, their wrists each cuffed in his firm grip. He breathes from his chest. He sights down at Catherine and then at William. He struggles to direct his sense of betrayal and anger away from his son.
He is unable to ease his breathing.
He drags William upstairs.
Catherine tries to follow them.
“Don’t,” snaps Murat.
She hasn’t succeeded in taking even a full step. Caught in the foyer, she clutches at her silk blazer, pulling its lapels across her body as if warding off a chill. Murat stands in the stairwell and flips the light switch.
William watches as the chandelier above his mother goes out.
Half past three that morning
His apartment has a view. It seems they all do. This is an advantage of living in a terraced city, one that reaches into the hills. The window by Peter’s bed looks out on the First Bosphorus Bridge. Its spans and cables are ornamented with turquoise LED lights that reflect off the water, which glides past like black oil. The strong current swirls in the light and the surface of the deep strait swims with color.