‘You own or borrowed from someone a çigirtma?’ I asked.
‘A what?’ he replied.
I was pretty sure my pronunciation wasn’t that bad and he was just being a prick.
‘A çigirtma,’ I repeated.
He looked blank and shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, American – maybe it’s the accent.’
I managed to keep my temper and picked up a stitching awl – a long, pointed spike – he had been using to pierce leather for his repair work. I scratched the surface of his table with it …
‘Hey – whaddaya doing?’ he objected, but I ignored it.
‘There it is,’ I said, when I had finished scratching out the name of the instrument. ‘Recognize it now?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he said, barely glancing at it. ‘A çigirtma.’ Strange, it sounded almost identical to my pronunciation.
‘You were playing one here at the table, about a week ago – maybe a folk song for the archives?’ I was only asking him to make absolutely certain I had found the right phone box: plenty of investigations have foundered on agents desperate for information leaping to the wrong conclusion.
‘I don’t know – I can’t recall,’ he said, with a surliness that was hard to believe.
I have to admit that I was amped – at last I was close to finding a tangible lead in the labyrinth – and maybe that was why I snapped. I was still holding the stitching awl – a nasty little bastard of a thing – and Pamuk’s left hand was resting on the table. It was so fast I doubt he even saw it. I drove the end of the needle straight through the thin web of skin between his thumb and index finger, pinning his hand to the table. He screamed in pain, but he should have thanked me for being a good shot – half an inch either way and he would never have played bass again.
Immediately I grabbed his forearm to stop him moving – in such a situation, most people’s impulse is to pull their hand away and, in doing so, he would have ripped the web of flesh apart and increased the damage dramatically. Immobilizing him meant that all he had was a puncture wound, which – painful as it was – would heal quickly.
It was funny, though, how a steel awl through the hand concentrated his mind. He looked at me, listening to every word I said, biting his lip with the pain.
‘You’re a good bass player,’ I told him, ‘maybe one of the best I’ve heard – and I know what I’m talking about – but it’s not the world’s fault it didn’t work out for you.
‘You don’t like playing covers of other people’s music? Then leave. Write stuff, put on concerts of folk music for tourists, do something – but drop the attitude.
‘That’s the advice, here’s the warning. Lie to me now and I promise you won’t be able to do any of those things, not even “Mamma Mia” for the ten thousandth time – you’ll be lucky if you can strum a ukulele with your fucking teeth. Okay?’
He nodded, scared, probably thinking I was some sort of US government-sanctioned psycho. I thought of telling him that was the post office, not the FBI, but decided to let it ride. I ordered him to hold perfectly still, and I managed to extract the awl without causing any further damage. He gasped with the pain, but that was nothing compared with the yell he let out when I doused the wound with a liberal splash from the open bottle of raki standing on the table.
‘Alcohol,’ I explained, ‘is a great antiseptic.’ I grabbed a piece of white linen he had been intending to use to polish the folk instrument when he was finished and bound his hand. I did it expertly, just tight enough to ease the pain and restrict the bleeding.
‘You were a doctor?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I just picked up a bit of knowledge along the way – dressing gunshot wounds, mostly.’
He stared at me and decided I wasn’t joking, which was the attitude I needed. ‘Were you playing the çigirtma – yes or no?’ I asked again as soon as I had tied off the bandage.
‘Yes,’ he replied, thankful to have his hand back and flexing the fingers to make sure they still worked.
‘How was my pronunciation this time – okay?’
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘It seems to have improved greatly, thanks to the needle.’
I couldn’t help it – I laughed. I poured him a shot of the raki and took the edge off my voice.
‘I want you to listen to a piece of music,’ I said, pulling out the MP3 player. ‘Is that you?’
He listened for a moment. ‘Yeah … yeah, it is,’ he replied, his voice full of surprise.