Snow by Orhan Pamuk Page A

to Ka that they were from MIT. They insisted all the same on seeing Ka’s identity card and asking him his business. Ka said once again that he had come to cover the municipal elections and the suicide girls for the Republican.
    “It’s because people like you are writing about them in the Istanbul papers that these girls are committing suicide in the first place,” said one of the policemen.
    “No, it’s not,” Ka said stubbornly.
    “What’s your explanation then?”
    “They’re committing suicide because they’re unhappy.”
    “We’re unhappy too, but we don’t commit suicide.” 
    While this conversation was going on, they were combing the branch headquarters with their flashlights, opening cabinets, taking out drawers, dumping their contents onto tabletops, and leafing through files. They turned Muhtar’s table upside down to look for weapons, and they pulled out one of the heavy filing cabinets to look behind that. They treated Ka much better than they treated Muhtar.
    “After you saw the director of the Institute being shot, why did you come here instead of going straight to the police?”
    “I had an appointment here.”
    “Why?”
    “We’re old friends from university,” said Muhtar, in an apologetic voice. “And the daughter of the owner of the Snow Palace Hotel, where he’s staying, is my wife. Just before the incident, they called me and made an appointment. Our phones here at party headquarters are tapped, so you’ll have no trouble verifying this.”
    “What do you know about our tapping your phones?”
    “I beg your pardon,” said Muhtar, without the slightest annoyance. “I don’t know for sure—I was only guessing. Maybe I am wrong.” 
    Ka felt a tinge of respect for Muhtar, who had ingratiated himself with the policemen treating him roughly, who was taking their pushing and shoving with equanimity, who, like the rest of Kars, shrugged off the power outages and the dreary muddiness of the roads.
    Having searched every corner of the branch headquarters, over-turned every drawer, and emptied every file folder, the policemen bound a few discoveries together with string, noting them for the official record, and threw the bundle into a sack. Then they took Ka and Muhtar down to the patrol car. As they sat in the back side by side like two mum and guilty children, Ka saw subordination return to the huge white hands resting like two fat old dogs on Muhtar’s knees.
    As the patrol car inched its way through the dark snow-covered streets, the two stared miserably at the weak orangey lights shining out through the half-drawn curtains of the old Armenian mansions, at the elderly clutching plastic bags and struggling down the icy pavements, at the dark old empty houses, lonely as ghosts. On the billboard in front of the National Theater a poster announced that evening’s performance. The workmen were still out on the streets installing the cable for the live transmission. The crowds milling around the bus station looked ever more impatient with the roads still closed.
    The snowflakes now seemed large as the ones in those boules de neige Ka had played with as a child; as the police car trundled slowly through the snow he felt as if he were inside a fairy tale. Because the driver was taking great care, even this short trip took seven or eight minutes, but all the while he exchanged only one look with Muhtar; he could tell from his friend’s miserable look of resignation that when they reached police headquarters Muhtar would get a beating while he himself would be spared.
    He read something else into the look his friend gave him, and it would stay with him many years: Muhtar thought he deserved the beating he was about to get. Even with the certainty of his winning the election in four days’ time, there was something so unsettling about his composure as to make him seem contrite for what had not yet happened; it was almost as if he were thinking, I deserve this beating not just for