“Welcome, my son,” she said. “I was like an aunt to him. His mother and my mother suckled together…”

She was expecting me to make a similar announcement. I quickly made something up.

“My condolences,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“So many loved him. They’ve been coming to pay their respects all day long. Bless them all. Come in…”

I was waved into the living room. It was full of men. The women must be sitting in a second parlor, with the guests separated by gender. The man with bleary eyes sitting right across from the TV had to be Ziya Göktaş. He looked like the typical baddie in an old Turkish film: dark and mustachioed. Right out of the school of Erol Taş, Bilal Inci, and Hayati Hamzaoğlu. He looked up at me. His expert eye immediately determined what I was, and assigned me points. Suddenly, he rose to his feet and embraced me.

He reeked of tobacco.

I was taken aback by the unexpected attention. He must have confused me with someone else.

“Have a seat, chum,” he said.

The word “chum” spoke volumes. He wasn’t at all upset. Or if he was, he’d recovered in no time. Beneath black brows, his eyes shone with the shifty cunning of the film villain plotting some dastardly plan.

As is the tradition, everyone in the room droned at length about the flawless character of the newly departed and his endless good deeds. I would have to say a word or two. I did.

The brother-in-law stared at me, the kind of look that imprisons its target. He was on to me; in fact, he fancied me. But he had no idea who I was, why I had come, or how he could make a move on me without anyone else noticing.

I, too, wished to be alone with him. But for entirely different reasons.

None of the sitters seemed to have any intention of leaving their chairs. Whenever there was silence, someone would emit a long, heartfelt “ahhhh,” and begin a lengthy monologue on the implications of death and the relative meaninglessness of life. Ziya and I appeared to be the only ones there who actually looked at each other. Everyone else was either staring at the floor or contemplating the distant corners of the universe.

Like any troublemaker, Ziya was quick on his feet.

“Come, my lion, let me show you Volkan’s old room,” he said. I assumed I was the “lion” he referred to, since he didn’t know my name.

Holding up an arm in a gesture meant to urge the others not to interrupt their floor gazing, he threw the other one around my shoulders and led me off. I was able to shake it off with a light shrug, but he then moved behind me. I could feel his eyes on my bottom as we walked down the hallway and into a tiny bedroom. There was no indication that the room had ever belonged to Volkan. In it was only a single bed, a chair piled high with blankets, and a rickety-looking wardrobe.

As he’d opened the door and lightly pushed me in, Ziya had copped a feel of my arm and my shoulder.

“You’re him!” he exclaimed, once he’d closed the door. “I knew it the minute you walked in. Well, I’ve got to admit it. Our boy had good taste.”

There was nowhere to sit but the bed. I didn’t want to sit right next to him and be subjected to more groping, so I headed toward the window, intending to sit at the foot of the bed, as far away from him as possible. I pretended to look outside at the dark courtyard garden, which contained two fruit trees and a pile of junked furniture.

“Volkan and I were real close,” he said. “He showed me some of your poems.”

So that was it! The idiot thought I was Refik Altın, the latest lover Volkan had sponged off of. I decided not to correct him for as long as the mix-up suited my purposes.

“I needed to see you,” I said, “to clear some things up.”

“Come sit next to me,” he coaxed. “Let me give you a hug.”

“Volkan told me all about you,” I said, as I pushed him off. It wasn’t as though Volkan was going to come and contradict anything I said. Ziya changed color.

“Aman!” he exclaimed. “Keep those pretty lips sealed. You hear me?”

I studied him for a moment. I tend to purse my lips while I think. He misunderstood.

“I could eat those beautiful lips,” he leered. What a creep.

“You pulled a knife on him,” I continued.

“That’s a lie!”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You claim to be in love with him, then you pull a knife on him when he leaves you.”

That same villainous look was still plastered on his face as he lewdly looked me up and down. Pulling a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, he lit it.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “Burning love! It’d be great if all love affairs were like that… such passion… lasting for years.”

Taking a long drag on his cigarette, he looked thoughtful.

“Is that what he said?”

I figured flattery would be the best way to get him to talk. “Of course,” I replied. “He told me so much about you.”

After another puff of his cigarette, he paused for a moment. I was watching him. He seemed lost in thought, like he was contemplating the mysteries of the universe.

“That’s right, I loved him,” he said finally. “I’d never met anyone like him, and I haven’t since. Such airs, so beautiful. You wouldn’t know. You should have seen him when he was young. Like an angel. Before his beard grew… Before hair grew on his pink and white body. Skin like cream, and he smelled so fresh. And what a fast learner. You know what I mean? Even at that age…”

I have never understood pedophilia. It may be because I prefer more mature men, but I just don’t get it. In fact, it’s deeply disturbing.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. A young boy like that…”

“He wasn’t that young,” Ziya argued. “When his stepdad came, they gave him to me. He’d finished middle school. He was old enough to come. And he enjoyed it, too. I’m no child molester. You know what I mean?”

So there were apparently alternative definitions of pedophilia.

He must have sensed my discomfort, even disgust.

“In a lot of countries in Europe the age of consent is sixteen,” he pointed out. Had this brute of a man actually bothered to research this?

“What difference does it make?” I countered. “A child is a child!”

“It’s not like that at all. Why won’t you understand me? I mean, what about here in Turkey? Girls of thirteen and fourteen get married off all the time. My dad got married in the village when he was only sixteen or seventeen. He hadn’t even done his military service yet. He went off to the army after I was born. It’s not what you think!”

“I see,” I said, just to put the conversation to an end.

He was lost in the “old days,” and absentmindedly reached under the bed, pulling out a bottle of cheap cognac. He’d obviously been making frequent visits to the bottle all morning long. Taking a swallow, he offered me the bottle.

“It’ll warm you up…”

If I intended to get him talking-and I did-I would have to join in. Most of the mouthful I took under his watchful eye went right back into the bottle.

“Feel better now?” he asked.

I nodded, grimacing as though my throat was burning from the cognac.

“He loved me too…” he said. He was staring off into the distance again. “I had to keep him to myself, so I went and married his sister. She’s a good person, but she doesn’t know how to be a real woman. All these years, and she still hasn’t learned how to really get me going. She won’t even suck on it… But Volkan, he was something else. I’d go straight from his sister’s bed to his. I’d make up excuses, tell her the boy was crying, that I couldn’t sleep. I knocked her up three times just so she’d be too busy to notice. She was too busy nursing and looking after our kids to catch me, even once. Summers I’d send her off to her mother’s, along with the kids… And it would be just the two of us. Then we’d get to sleep in the big bed. All night long…”

I’d known about their relationship, but hadn’t expected such passion. At the mention of Volkan, his eyes shone and he practically licked his chops.