Free Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selcuk Altun Page A

to research done by the municipality, sixty-nine per cent of the population lived below the breadline. I preferred to concentrate on the superficial stewardesses pacing back and forth, as if the plane would plummet to earth without them.
    I met Dalga in the lobby of the family hotel Le Meridien in Piccadilly. She looked more haggard than I expected but was still smart and attractive. It was strange to see she still walked like a tomboy, ready to leap up and smash a volleyball if it appeared on the horizon. Considering what she had written in her note, I was prepared for a semi-formal embrace, though I would have loved to feel the scent of her body once again.
    She suggested going up to my room. She threw her suede coat on the bed and took a bottle of whisky from the minibar. We sat opposite each other, wondering, suspicious. She made me talk but I doubt if she took anything in. I was beginning to feel ill-at-ease seeing her own increasing embarrassment. On her fourth attempt to light the cigarette she’d taken from her crumpled packet of Dunhill, she started on her tirade:
    â€˜I’m going to get straight to the point and you mustn’t ask any questions. I have a knife in my bag in case you get disgusted and assault me.
    â€˜Arda, from the time I was fifteen until he died, I was your father’s lover. He had this Sean Connery look that made every woman’s heart beat faster. His voice was particularly attractive. My mother, even my distressed auntie, admired him. Like a part-time Lolita I managed to seduce him by entering his room under the pretext of studying. In his room we’d be content with foreplay but we had passionate get-togethers in the houses of his bachelor friends. He was happy with my admiration and I was happy when he made me feel important by sharing his troubles. Every time we met I felt I’d grown up a year.
    â€˜He complained that your mother’s character changed after your birth. “In front of other people she showed me the respect due to a scholar or a sheikh, but she exhausted me with her problems and with making love. If she saw me fearful and ready to break because of her malice, she’d suddenly turn into an angel to stop me from running away,” he said. “None of my scientific achievements made me as happy as becoming a father. If I took my baby son in my arms, she’d become as malevolent as a reptile. As Arda grew, her jealousy increased, and she began to abuse the poor boy whenever I got close to him. Sadly I became used to the idea of loving my son at a distance, hoping that distance would protect him, yet I couldn’t totally withdraw.” He thought you were smarter than him and that due to your dysfunctional family, you’d chosen to conceal your genius by maturing fast to escape an oppressive childhood. I think we both knew that sooner or later your mother would catch us. She learned about our relationship the summer of my last year at high school. Now all she had to do was provoke my enraged grandfather. When he heard of the latest disaster, my grandfather gave us a lump sum of money and kicked us out. “I don’t want to see your faces ever again, you low-life whores,” he said. We took refuge with my mother’s cousin, who lived alone in her tiny flat in the quiet district of Erenköy. While I put up with this hotbed of developments, I thought it strange that my mother was cross with me, as she herself was the mistress of a young married colleague.
    â€˜Almost immediately after she broke free from her house arrest my mother started to blossom. She met an old flirt at a New Year’s party for her faculty friends and her fate took a turn for the better. They married quickly. Her new husband lived in Paris. After his aging first wife had died, he’d inherited a gourmet restaurant and a wine company. The day I got my half-term report, my mother left for Toulouse, I received an acceptance from the Psychology