About the Author
CHRISTOPH PETERS's debut novel Stadt, Land, Fluss (1999) was awarded the Aspekte-Lieraturpreis for the best German-language literary debut. In 2001 he published a highly acclaimed collection of short stories. Peters lives in Berlin.
From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
This novel breaks rules and gets away with it. It looks like a thriller, acts like a character study and leaves the reader pondering its own narrative structure. The Fabric of Night takes place in Istanbul, where a 28-year-old German sculptor named Albin Kranz is vacationing with his longtime girlfriend, Livia. Albin is also keeping company with alcohol, but that's nothing new: They've been tight, if you will, for years. As a rule, he tries to hide his habit -- or at least the extent of it -- from Livia, though she doesn't miss much.
Besides her lover's drunkenness, Livia has to put up with being constantly tested. As Albin admits in one of the interior monologues that take up about half the book, for the five years they've been together, he's been "trying to find out if she loved [him], and if she did, whether her love had limits." Just now, he's pretty sure it does: Livia isn't hiding her interest in an art student, Jan, who belongs to a group from Frankfurt with whom she and Albin have teamed up to sightsee.
But Albin is indifferent to Livia's looming betrayal because he's become obsessed with a crime. As he watched and listened from across the street, Miller, an American gem dealer and fellow carouser, was out on the balcony of his hotel room, breakfasting with a female companion. Just after Miller uttered an oddly worded sentence ("Take care of you, baby"), "a sound sizzled over the rooftops, a short, sharp sound like rubber bursting or the cork coming out of a wine bottle, and Miller fell forward," dead.
Had that been all, had the hotel acted responsibly and the police gone to work on the case, Albin might have just given his eyewitness report and returned to his boozing. But when he went over to see where things stood, the hotel desk clerk not only denied that any such thing had happened but added, "There's no Mr. Miller registered here." Annoyed and tantalized, Albin sets out to find the real Turkey, not the package of antiquities and quaint customs or even the port-of-call salaciousness that most foreigners settle for. But he's no romantic in search of self-transcendence; he's a flawed but decent guy, a besotted Everyman trying to get to the bottom of a murder.
Peters, a Berliner whose second novel this is, takes the reader on a vivid tour of Istanbul, with savvy-sounding commentary on such aspects as the "floral ornamentation on Islamic art." One theory traces the motif back to the Gardens of Bliss mentioned in the Koran. Another cites the influence of imported Chinese porcelain. "I like the idea of the gardens," says one of the Germans. This reader does, too.
Even travelers who swear by the Rough Guides may be surprised -- and unnerved -- by Albin's forays into Istanbul's underworld. His harrowing excursion to the Gypsy district, which he undertakes in spite of warnings to stay away, speaks eloquently for keeping to well-trodden paths. Peters's dialogue, as rendered in John Cullen's artful translation, is pungent and fraught. At the end of a long, affable conversation with a rug-dealer, Albin is told, "You've lost your game, my friend." The dealer isn't talking about carpets anymore, and it's a chilling moment because until then, Albin's fishing for information had seemed quite skillful.
In the end, though, a book with the elements of a mystery doesn't stay true to form. Peters is more interested in portraying a troubled artist against the backdrop of a culture clash, in exploring the ravages and comforts of excessive drinking, in depicting the heroism and hubris of trying to penetrate a foreign nation's criminal milieu, than in spinning a puzzle-plot. He carries out these intentions so well that, despite leaving some questions unanswered, The Fabric of Night is absorbing and strangely satisfying.
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1.
“Take care of you, baby.”
I wonder how Albin came up with this ridiculous expression. It seems highly unlikely that he could have actually heard it. Maybe if there had been a very strong offshore wind, but not otherwise. Under ordinary circumstances, if you're here, you can't hear anything that's being said over there; the Otelo Sultan and the Duke's Palace are much too far apart. And besides, it should be, "Take care of yourself, baby."
Later, when Livia and I were alone, she described what happened, but she didn’t say anything about wind. It was a cold morning, she said. The yellow sun was shining through dark, lowering clouds, and there was no way of telling what the weather would be like. Maybe the day will turn out fine, she thought, or maybe it’ll rain again, like yesterday and the day before that. The morning light was quite pleasant—filtered, but still bright. Although they hadn’t quarreled, Albin remained silent. He looked pale as he sat there, mechanically chewing a sesame ring and drinking pots of coffee. A beautiful man, Livia thought, in spite of everything; beautiful like a chalk cliff. She’d woken up hungry and loaded her plate at the buffet with olives, sheep’s milk cheese, sausage, ham, and eggs, the kind of breakfast Albin always found nauseating. On this occasion, however, he diverged from his usual practice and kept his opinions to himself. They’d known each other long enough to be untroubled by silence, so Livia saw no reason to break it, either. Nevertheless, it was a silence that Albin had clearly started, all on his own. For her part, Livia would have been glad to discuss their plans for the day, analyze the puzzling acne epidemic among the waiters, or speculate about Miller’s business deals. After a while, for no discernible reason and with his mouth full, Albin said, “The minarets stick up into the sky like acupuncture needles, diverting energy into the right channels.”
He did not, however, expect a reply. The image appealed to her. Lost in thought, still warm from sleep, she turned in her chair, shifting her eyes from the view she was facing—narrow, sloping streets, and beyond them the sea—to share Albin’s view: the city, with its countless mosques and its covered Grand Bazaar. And then, suddenly, there was this ship. She hadn’t noticed it earlier—maybe Albin’s remark made her look more closely—but there on the horizon, which seemed to have slid strangely to the left and moved much closer, she suddenly saw a burning ship. It was already listing badly, about to sink into the water at any moment. Thin black plumes of smoke drifted away toward the southwest. She was expecting a soundless explosion or, at the very least, a flare–up, an eruption of flames. The thought that people might be in danger, or even that there were people on the ship, never occurred to her, nor did she feel any impulse to point out the sinking vessel to Albin. For a few moments, she considered going inside and getting her camera out of their room, but not because disasters are always big sellers and the burning ship offered the prospect of some highly marketable shots. No, Livia wanted her camera because—and here she stopped, shrugged her shoulders, and lit a cigarette—because something was bothering her, something didn’t seem right. At the time she was telling me this, she still didn’t know what exactly it was that had caused her uneasiness, but in any case the camera stayed in the room, because after a few minutes, she realized she wasn’t looking at the horizon at all, nor was there any blazing ship, just an immensely long harbor warehouse that kept appearing between blocks of houses. It was venting ordinary smoke from its heating system through a red-and-white striped chimney. Livia laughed—or rather, she tried to laugh—but found she couldn't and shook her head. Discovering the true nature of her vision had done nothing to alleviate her discomfort; on the contrary, she was left with a sinking, anchorless feeling, as if she’d stopped being able to read her watch all of a sudden or had accidentally tried to unlock some stranger’s door.
After Albin had eaten three quarters of his sesame ring, he went out onto the roof terrace to throw the rest to the hotel’s two resident seagulls. He knew they’d fight over the bread. As soon as the crumbs hit the tiles, the birds would spread their wings and start hopping around each other, making evil hissing sounds and flashing their narrow tongues like little knives. From where she was sitting, Livia had a good view of this scene, but then Albin disappeared in the direction of the artificial sunbathing lawn, probably because he was hoping to peer through the windows across the way and catch a glimpse of something interesting, a woman getting dressed, say, or a father striking his daughter. Up to this point, Livia said, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual about Albin; she was certainly accustomed to his silences.
For this time period, Livia’s account is all I have to rely on, because at that moment the rest of us were on an InterCity train, the Markgrafler Land, somewhere between Mannheim and Frankfurt. Mona was sitting at my side. For the last ten minutes, she’d been holding a sharpened pencil in one hand and staring at her brand–new Istanbul city map, searching in vain for the street where our hotel was supposed to be. According to the index, the Duke’s Palace Hotel was to be found in quadrant F5, but Tiyatro Caddesi, the street the hotel was on, wasn't marked on the map. The Ramada, the Baron, the Prestige, and the Sultan were also allegedly in F5. However, there were only four blue H’s in this square, all of them so haphazardly placed that they could have been on any one of two or three different streets. With the help of a list of addresses, she’d managed to identify the Ramada, the Baron, and the Prestige, but she still had to choose between one of the remaining two hotels.
“I really want to know where we’re going to spend the next ten days,” Mona said.
“Forget about it,” I said. “They can't be more than fifty meters apart, so it doesn’t matter.”
“All the same, I want to know.”
“As soon as we’re on the street—”
“I want to know now, Olaf, not later!”
Although Istanbul lies on practically the same latitude as Naples, cold air sweeping in from Siberia had already made the temperature quite chilly. Albin was shivering as he leaned over the balustrade. Because the Duke’s Palace stands farther down the slope (which of course Mona had no way of knowing about, as her map didn't show topography), the Otelo Sultan towered above Albin. He noticed that two of the Sultan’s guests, Mr. Miller and his girlfriend, Ireen, were finishing their breakfast, which had been served not in the designated breakfast room but in their suite, with champagne as well as coffee, and ham and eggs freshly cooked in a skillet instead of warmed in a metal steam tray. Albin watched Miller light a long cigarillo. The blue smoke hovered festively over the remains of the meal, and while Mona was sitting in the train, penciling a circle around the last H without knowing that it actually stood for the Duke’s Palace, Livia went back to the hotel room to take a shower. Ireen leaned away from the table, binding her hair in a loose knot. In a room on the floor below, the wrinkled back of an older woman emerged from the darkness as she awkwardly tried to fasten her brassiere. Albin grimaced, first in disparagement of aging flesh, second because he found his interest in other people’s lives banal, and third because he had heartburn. The seagulls perched on the railing and ogled the guests in their rooms. Later, Mona tried to draw the gulls, even going so far as to get special permission from the hotel to stay on the terrace after breakfast was over, but at about ten–thirty, when the buffet was being cleared away, the birds sprang into the air and glided toward the harbor. It didn’t matter, because she could never have captured the suspicion in their eyes. Mona’s drawing skills are limited; that’s why she’s in such demand as a model.
It was very quiet on the terrace, Albin told me, so he went out there for half an hour every morning after breakfast. According to him, Istanbul consists of pure cacophony, and that terrace was the only quiet place he ever found. He thought of the endless tumult as the binding material that held the city together: if the noise stopped, the whole place would fly apart. This last observation was an example of Albin's fondness for dramatic phrases. However, as far as the quiet on the roof terrace of the Duke’s Palace Hotel is concerned, he was right. The all–enveloping uproar—the noise of engines, horns, fan belts, brakes; the shouts of infuriated drivers, eager tradesmen, worried mothers, ill–bred children—stops halfway up the facade of the building. Up there, on the terrace, all you can hear is a distant murmuring, scarcely louder than the sea, and now and then the howl of a ship’s siren.
Albin said that Miller’s balcony door was wide open. He heard Ireen laughing, a long, melodious laugh, slightly forced, and then Miller leaned over her and whispered something. He spoke too softly for Albin to hear, but Ireen suddenly looked terrified, and then—Albin said he didn't care whether I believed this or not—Miller said, “Take care of you, baby.” This sentence struck Albin as rather fatuous, even coming from an American, but a split second later a sound sizzled over the rooftops, a short, sharp sound like rubber bursting or the cork coming out of a wine bottle, and Miller fell forward, still holding the cigarillo pressed between his lips. He didn't w...
