The Oracle of Stamboul

by Michael David Lukas

  “Would you like me to open them?” asked Monsieur Karom, standing at attention.

  “Yes,” she said. “Please.”

  He removed the letter opener from his breast pocket and, with a small flourish, tore the pearl-white envelope perfectly across its top. It was a motion Eleonora had seen him perform dozens of times, but as she watched him open this, the first letter she had ever received, her breath caught and stumbled.

  “It’s an invitation,” she said after reading it through. “My presence is cordially requested for dinner at the British embassy.”

  “Curious,” said the Bey, but he did not say why he thought it so.

  The second letter was a request from a young woman whose father had died suddenly, before he could formally arrange a suitable match for her. She now had three suitors at her door, all of whom claimed her late father’s blessing. It wasn’t clear exactly what the young woman wanted from Eleonora, though she concluded the letter with the words “I am confident you will be able to help.”

  Over the next three days, Eleonora was inundated with invitations, calling cards, letters, and telegrams requesting her presence and guidance. Most of the communicants lived in Stamboul, though a few came from more distant reaches of the Ottoman realm, cities such as Selonika and Trabzon, places she had heard of and could place on a map, but knew little of besides. Later in the week, telegrams began arriving from as far afield as Copenhagen and Chicago. No matter where they came from, and no matter how tattered or fine the stationery, Eleonora answered these missives all the same. She declined politely the invitations to parties and dinners, explaining that she was still not in possession of complete health. And she tried her best to answer the requests for guidance with the soundest advice she could muster. Though the truth was, she was having a hard enough time finding answers to her own problems.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the end of August, Eleonora had recovered entirely from her episode at the palace. In spite of this happy resolution, she could not escape the feeling that something inexorable in her life had shifted. It was like sitting down to a sumptuous meal of roast lamb, stuffed quinces, and barley salad, only to find the silverware missing. As she went through the familiar routine of life in the Bey’s house, Eleonora could not help but feel the uncomfortable tightness of fate constricting about her, limiting the scope of her future like an ever-shrinking dress. She felt as if she were waiting for something to snap, to tear, to reveal a weakness in the fabric.

  Even those relationships that mattered to her most did not feel steady. Although she had told the Bey everything she could remember about her second audience with the Sultan and her recovery afterward in the harem, although she had explained to him her views on the connection between the Hyrcanians and the Ottoman Empire, although he had forgiven her multiple times for her inadvertent betrayal, although they spoke more candidly and frequently now than they ever had before, Eleonora felt a piece of her relationship with the Bey was forever altered. Even when he spoke to her of trivial matters—the heat, the rising price of cotton, or the availability of cherries in the produce market—his forehead was tense and his eyebrows cocked into a question.

  And it wasn’t just the Bey. Monsieur Karom was far more deferential than he had ever been. He bowed almost imperceptibly as he handed Eleonora her mail and held his breath when he brushed her crumbs from the table. At bath time, Mrs. Damakan scrubbed her like a delicate piece of glassware she feared damaging. And when the old handmaid buttoned up the backs of her dresses, Eleonora could feel her fingers trembling. Even Eleonora’s flock had changed. They were more eager and determined now, as if they could sense the fulfillment of a promise hidden somewhere beneath the blanket of hot air. Each morning, she watched them set out one by one from the ledge beneath her window. And at the conclusion of the day, she followed their return one by one in the same order they had departed. Where their sorties led them, what they sought out there in the wilds of the city, Eleonora could only guess.

  It seemed sometimes that the entire world was off its axis. Eleonora had taken occasionally to glancing through the Bey’s discarded copy of the Stamboul Herald. As she read through the news of the previous day, she could not help but feel that something essential had come unmoored. In a period of just two weeks, she read of a tense standoff between the British Navy and the emperor of China, a devastating earthquake in the southern United States, a cholera outbreak in Spain, dozens of suicides (including a sensational fake suicide jump from a bridge in New York), more than a few stabbings, and a rash of brazen bank robberies in Geneva. In addition to all this conflict and disease, the Stamboul Herald also reported that His Excellency Sultan Abdulhamid II was in the process of disassembling the empire’s long-standing alliance with the Germans. The article included no details beyond this, though it attributed the Sultan’s motivation to the influences of his “youthful advisor.”

  The greatest shock, however, came in the form of a telegram, delivered late one morning at the height of summer. Eleonora was reading through the classifieds on the back page of the Stamboul Herald when Monsieur Karom came into the dining room with a pile of letters and telegrams. He placed the stack and his letter opener on the table next to her and bowed out of the room, knowing she preferred to open her letters herself. As was her custom, she went through the stack and examined each of the envelopes before setting in with the opener. Among the stack was a telegram from Paris, a somewhat shabby letter from Trabzon, and a few of her own letters that had been returned for one reason or another. Near the bottom, she came upon a curious telegram that she couldn’t quite decipher at first. It had been sent through a British company called Imperial and International Communication Ltd. In spite of its origin, the message was not written in English, at least not that she could tell. Eleonora stared down at the purple muddle of characters, and blinked. She flattened the paper on the table, allowed her mind to relax, and focused as sharply as she could. Soon she worked out the puzzle. Though composed in Roman letters, the telegram was written in her mother tongue.

  READ ABOUT YOU IN THE NEWSPAPER CONGRATULATIONS COMING TO STAMBOUL SOON WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU THEN THINGS IN CONSTANTA ARE WELL—YOUR AUNT RUXANDRA

  After reading over it twice, Eleonora lifted the piece of paper off the table. She stared down into the empty polish and watched her reflection shift through the texture of the wood. Her aunt Ruxandra. She bit her lip, crumpled the telegram into a small pale blue ball, and did her best to chase it from her mind. She knew, however, that this was not possible. No matter what she did, no matter if she burned it or swallowed it or ripped it into tiny pieces, she would not be able to rid herself of this message, nor the knowledge of how callously her aunt, her only remaining family, had abandoned her in her time of need. No matter what Eleonora did, her hands would smell of the ink and the words would be written on her mind in capital letters.

  “Miss Cohen?”

  Eleonora recognized Mrs. Damakan’s voice, but she did not look up.

  “Are you feeling unwell, Miss Cohen?”

  She felt a shudder escape to her extremities. She was not feeling well, not at all. She shut her eyes and closed her fingers ever more tightly around the balled-up telegram, feeling its corners dig into her palm. As much as she wanted to show Mrs. Damakan the note, to seek her advice and her sympathy, Eleonora kept the telegram crumpled in her hand. To tell anyone, even Mrs. Damakan, about the telegram, to speak its name aloud would make it real in a way Eleonora could not yet stomach.

  “It’s the heat,” she said, raising her head. “If you don’t mind, I think a glass of water would do me well.”

  Mrs. Damakan was happy to oblige. When she returned with it, Eleonora drank the glass of water in two long gulps.

  “Thank you,” she exhaled. “I feel much better.”

  And it was true. She did feel much better. However, the telegram still remained.

  “I think I could use a short walk,” she said, taking care to conceal her clenched fist.
“Just about the house.”

  Mrs. Damakan took the empty glass from the table.

  “If you need anything—” she began.

  “If I need anything, I will be sure to let you know.”

  As she turned to leave, Mrs. Damakan gave her a look of dejected resignation, a look such as an illiterate father might give a son who has rebuked him for his ignorance. Eleonora had not meant to be so sharp. She loved Mrs. Damakan like an aunt, like a mother.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Damakan. It’s just that I am feeling restless.”

  Eleonora wandered through the Bey’s house with no particular destination in mind. She ambled down the great hall, under the sullen gaze of the Barcous clan, past the library and the drawing room. She had never felt quite so alone. For the first time, she truly understood what General Krzab meant when he complained of the leaden weight of responsibility, that onerous plow the better part of humanity strives endlessly to yoke round its neck.

  Eleonora found herself eventually at the entrance to the women’s quarters. She had not visited the corridors for quite some time, but she felt drawn to them now, to their dark and dusty solitude. Clearing her mind as best she could, she crossed the foyer and climbed the stairs to the corridors. She wandered to a particularly dark corner above the kitchen and lay down on her back. Resting her head against the wood, she steadied her breathing and stared up into darkness without end. She knew there was a ceiling there, but she could not make out its contours. Eventually, her hand relaxed and she let the telegram drop to the floor beside her. She put her mind to work in trying to decipher the situation she now found herself at the middle of, to piece together what she knew about Ruxandra, the Bey, her father, the Sultan, and Reverend Muehler, but no matter how hard she thought, the pieces wouldn’t fit.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  His Excellency Abdulhamid II spread a white cloth napkin across his lap and lowered his nose to the plate of cold roast chicken on the table in front of him. Although he understood well the importance of etiquette, of courtly pomp and protocol, the constant attention to procedure sometimes grew tiresome. Sometimes His Excellency wanted nothing more than to eat an entire plate of cold roast chicken with his hands, to tear it limb from limb. And that was precisely what he intended to do. He was the Sultan after all. Grinning to himself at the perfect luxury of such a crude meal, he ripped the poor bird’s leg from its body and sunk his teeth through the flesh. The chicken had been roasted in the Aegean style and finished with a syrupy walnut paste. Even cold, its skin crackled. After sucking the leg bare, Abdulhamid used a piece of flat bread to pull the meat off the breasts and back and underside.

  When he was finished with the chicken, its carcass lay ravaged on the plate like some wayward harlot. Wiping his hands, he laid his napkin over the empty bones and reclined into his chaise lounge with a glass of mint tea. He allowed himself a brief reverie of an untoward nature before taking up again the second volume of The Hourglass. It truly was a wonderful book, filled with twists and turns, romance, pride, and greed. The translation of such great literature was a service to his subjects and an honor to the Turkish language. It was also beneficial to his own reading pleasure, but that was just a secondary consequence, a providential return on his munificence. Propping the book up against his stomach, Abdulhamid quickly lost himself. Engrossed as he was in the gruesome battle scene near the end of the volume, during which Lieutenant Brashov learns of his brother’s supposed death, the Sultan did not hear the click of the door opening.

  “Your Excellency.”

  It was the Grand Vizier, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper like a rapier.

  “What is it?”

  “Your Excellency. I know that you asked not to be disturbed. But I think you would like to see this.”

  The Sultan righted himself and, pulling his napkin over an exposed chicken bone, leaned across the table to take the unfurled newspaper from his advisor.

  “‘The Oracle of Stamboul,’” he said, glancing at the headline. “What is this? An editorial calling for my resignation? Another cry for religious freedom?”

  “Much worse, Your Excellency. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

  The Sultan read through the first paragraph, which took him some time as he was not especially practiced in English. Jamaludin Pasha coughed and clasped his hands in front of his body.

  “I was particularly upset by the line about your mother,” he said, indicating from a distance. “In the middle of the fourth paragraph.”

  The Sultan read aloud:

  “‘And she is rumored by some to be in league with the Sultan’s own mother.’”

  He punctuated the end of the sentence with a loud staccato laugh.

  “Miss Cohen in league with my mother. Against whom? To what end?”

  Jamaludin Pasha, however, was not amused. And Abdulhamid knew that he would not be able to get back to his book until this matter was resolved. Taking on an air of gravity, the Sultan folded the newspaper and laid it next to the remains of the recently dismembered chicken.

  “I see, of course, why you find this article troubling,” he said. “It is an assault on my fitness to rule. Not to mention the piece about my mother. But what action can we take against a newspaper in New York?”

  “We have tracked down the author of the piece. He is staying at the Pera Palace, room 307. If you wish, I can summon him to a meeting at the palace. We can give him a scare, something impressive to write his next installment about, then put him on the next ship back to New York.”

  “Yes,” said the Sultan. “Very well.”

  “I might also suggest, Your Excellency, that it would be best if you did not meet again with Miss Cohen, in light of these rumors.”

  The Sultan closed his eyes and pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

  “I thought you might suggest that,” he said. “Please leave the newspaper here. I will peruse it more closely and give you further directions this evening.”

  “There is one final piece of information, Your Excellency,” said the Grand Vizier. “If you don’t mind.”

  “No, by all means.”

  “I have contacted Miss Cohen’s aunt, Ruxandra, who appears to be the only relative of any use. My intention was nothing more than to alert the aunt of her niece’s whereabouts. In the course of our exchange, however, I felt compelled to offer the assistance of the palace should Miss Cohen decide she wants to leave the care of Moncef Bey and return to Constanta.”

  The Sultan murmured something to himself and rose from his seat, signifying that the meeting was over.

  “As I said, I will give you further instructions this evening.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” said the Grand Vizier, bowing out of the room.

  When the door clicked shut, Abdulhamid sat down again and unfolded the newspaper. It was rather an amusing piece, he had to admit, though inaccurate on many accounts and filled with quite damning implications. One could only imagine the rumors such a story would engender, had already engendered. He had just come again to the section about Miss Cohen and his mother when the woman herself burst into his room. Whatever the original intention of her visit, it was derailed by the sight of the article in her son’s hand.

  “I do hope that whoever wrote that insinuating slander is going to be punished severely.”

  The Sultan folded the paper in half and straightened his back.

  “A good day to you too, Mother.”

  “Excuse my impertinence, Your Excellency,” she said, bowing. “It’s just that—”

  “Not to worry,” he said. “I just now told Jamaludin Pasha to track down the author and punish him accordingly. We thought deportation would be sufficient.”

  “Deportation would be sufficient, I suppose, though it will not repair the damage done by this piece of refuse.”

  “The question then,” said the Sultan, ruefully sipping the lukewarm sediment at the bottom of his tea glass, “the question to my mind is what action we s
hould take to dispel these rumors.”

  “What has Jamaludin Pasha suggested?”

  “He is agnostic on the matter.”

  “Agnostic?”

  “Yes. He said he had no strong opinion.”

  This was a lie, of course. His mother knew better than anyone that the Grand Vizier was agnostic about nothing, but she could not directly contradict the Sultan. So she moved forward on a different tack.

  “Beyond punishing the author and dealing with the rumors,” she said, “there is also the matter of the girl herself. Something must be done about her. I see no need to punish her. She has done nothing wrong. But until something is done about her, we cannot begin to counteract the rumors.”

  “What approach would you suggest, Mother?”

  She raised her hand to her neck and stroked its full length, as if considering the question for the first time.

  “As I see it, there are two paths we could take. Neither is perfect, but both would serve our purposes well.”

  “Yes,” said Abdulhamid, glancing at the swirl of tea leaves and mint at the bottom of his glass. “Go on.”

  “The first path,” she said, “is deportation. Send her back to Romania and forget about her. The second path would be to invite her to live here in the palace. We could find a room for her somewhere on the edge of the harem, give her lessons in music and calligraphy. Both solutions have their problems, of course, but they both also have their benefits.”