“Oh, never mind. What will you have? Coffee? Pudding?”
“Just coffee.”
“Come on, now. Have a sweet.” Fanis had been looking forward to a pudding, and he hated it when others didn’t indulge with him.
“Mr. Fanis, I’m a pâtissier. I make that stuff all day.”
Fanis curled his lip and ordered two coffees and a sweet chicken pudding without cinnamon, which, he insisted, was very bad for the liver. Again he asked Kosmas what else he would have, hoping that the added pressure of the waiter’s presence might sway him, and again he was disappointed. The waiter displayed the compassionate smile that Turks reserve for idiosyncratic old folks—which rankled with Fanis even more—and sped off to fill the order.
First they talked about the rain and the latest gossip. When the shredded chicken pudding and coffee arrived, Fanis examined both cups for jealousy bubbles: Kosmas’s had none, whereas his had a persistent bead near the edge of the glass. “An evil eye,” he said, “and foam at the center. That’s money. Probably the stipend I’ll collect in a couple of weeks.” He took a sip. “The eye still didn’t break! It’s obstinate jealousy, the worst kind.” Fanis broke the jiggling white roll with his spoon and ate with childlike pleasure. A chicken thread dripped onto his chin. Wiping it with his napkin, he asked, “What did you want to talk about?”
Kosmas ate the chewy Turkish delight served with his coffee, summoned the waiter, and ordered a dried fruit pudding.
“Well?” said Fanis.
Kosmas folded his hands on the table. “I need help with the girl who looks like Semra Sar.”
Fanis’s mouth curled into a mischievous smile. “Daphne?”
“Daphne! I was so fucking nervous I forgot her name.”
“I’ve never heard you speak like that before,” said Fanis, with his spoon in midair.
“I don’t speak like that when I’m around my mother.”
Fanis snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth in disapproval. “And what do you want with Daphne?”
The boy looked left and right to see who could be listening. Finally he said, “I’d like to marry her.”
“You’ve seen her once.”
“Monsieur Julien proposed to his wife the night he met her.”
“And where is Julien’s wife now? In Paris with another man.” Fanis rolled his eyes. Kosmas’s father, who had died when the boy was just a teenager, had obviously not had a chance to educate him about women. Fanis continued: “Listen, son, the first thing you have to learn is this. A man who is on the lookout for a woman must never—never!—permit himself any weakness in vocabulary. You have to cut the foul language. From this moment on, you must be a perfect gentleman both in speech and in demeanor. You won’t do anything foolish. You won’t kiss a woman on the first date, if you get one—”
“Why not?”
“Do you want my advice or do you just want to do things your way?”
“Tamam, tamam. But may I ask a question? Are the stories they tell about you true?”
“If they were, a gentleman would never admit it.”
“Will you help me?”
Not even if it would guarantee me a place in Heaven, Fanis thought. Then he had an ingenious idea: perhaps playing the harmless grandfather and matchmaking confidant would provide him with a wedge into the life of that very woman who, on account of his advanced age, was just out of reach. So he said, “What do you want to know?”
“How do I get her to go out on a date with me?”
While Fanis considered what advice he should give—something useful enough to whet the girl’s appetite, yet not so effective that it would get the boy what he wanted—the waiter delivered the dried fruit pudding. Kosmas stared at it.
“Does it smell bad?” asked Fanis.
Kosmas clicked his tongue no and began eating. “It’s very sweet. And thick, which means they used starch.” He took another bite. “No rosewater, too little clove, but otherwise it’s not bad.”
“Finish your coffee, chef,” said Fanis. “Then cover the cup with the saucer, turn it over, and make a wish.”
“You read coffee dregs?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve never seen a man read coffee before. I thought fortune-telling was a female vice.”
“Well, you’re wrong. About that and a lot of things. Now do you want me to have a look or not? We might learn something about your chances with Daphne.”
Kosmas took his last sip of coffee, flipped the cup, closed his eyes, and made a wish.
Fanis wiped his mouth. “The first thing is your clothes. I don’t mean to offend, but those striped shirts . . . where did you get them?”
“My mother does our shopping.”
“Well. Mothers are sacred. But if someone were to dress me in your clothes before sealing me in my coffin, I’d come back to life screaming. No woman wants a man who dresses like that. We’ll have to change them.”
Kosmas dropped his spoon and looked at his watch. “It’s a quarter past six. Let’s go now. I’d like to pass by the tea garden later to see if she’s there, so we’d better hurry.”
“Finish eating,” said Fanis. “There’s more, much more, and we haven’t even looked at the coffee yet. Besides, you don’t want to make the rookie mistake of stalking her. You have to let women cook for at least a week after you meet them.” Fanis turned over his own cup, took out a pen, and wrote his barber’s address on a clean napkin. The boy wasn’t bad-looking: puppy brown eyes, mildly tanned skin, and features unworthy of note—except for a tiny scar on the forehead that made the right eyebrow seem permanently raised. If you didn’t know Kosmas well, you’d think he was looking at you with a dose of disapproval or sarcasm. All things considered, you might call him a good-looking fellow. But that brush-cut was another subject altogether.
“Let your hair grow a bit and then go to Ali. You look like you’re still in the army.” Fanis pricked his ears like a dog and tuned into the conversation at a nearby table. “Did you hear Greek?”
“No.”
“Yes. I think the girls over there are Greek. I have a nose for them. In the end, though, we aren’t Greeks. We’re Rums. Grandfather from grandfather, all the way from Byzantium, and we’re better off with our own Rum women, most of whom don’t care to get married because they have their retirement and their stipends. Why would they want a man over their heads? The rest have married Turks, and I don’t respect them. They don’t know how to choose. Who’s left?”
“Daphne.”
“Yes, Daphne. Let’s look at the coffee.” Fanis picked up Kosmas’s cup. “I see a voyage. It will happen soon.”
“Do you think it could be a trip to America to meet Daphne’s parents?”
“The path loops and comes back to the beginning.”
“That’s good,” said Kosmas. “I’d never have the courage to leave the City. And it’s her home, too, isn’t it? We’ll come back here to live.”
“There are obstacles.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“That’s it,” Fanis concluded. “The saucer is a plate of mud. I can’t see anything in it.”
Presently he picked up his own cup and beheld the clearest and most beautiful shapes that had ever appeared in coffee dregs. There was a thin woman with her arms crossed over her chest. A long, fanciful ponytail rose from her crown and undulated round the cup. The woman had to be the symbol of the solid good health that Fanis would enjoy with Daphne. Yet what was to be made of her crossed arms and ponytail? Presently he remembered the first time he’d seen Kalypso. Ponytail bouncing, she skipped into the Petridis Winehouse, her father’s meyhane, where Fanis ate his lunch on Saturdays, his mother’s reception day. Kalypso stopped in front of her father, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “Well, Tasos, are you going to take me to the cinema or not?” Fanis was impressed by her sass: not many girls dared call their fathers by their first names. He was also impres
sed by Tasos, who grabbed his hat without a second thought and left with his beaming daughter. But what was Kalypso doing in Fanis’s cup? Coffee dregs belonged to the realm of the future, not to the past.
“What do you see?” asked Kosmas.
“Never mind,” said Fanis. “Let’s hit a few stores.”
It was raining again when they stepped out into the crowds of evening shoppers. Fanis took Kosmas’s arm so that they could speak confidentially and nearly poked Kosmas in the eyes with the spokes of his plaid umbrella. They passed the Pearl, that old, wainscoted pastry shop where people lined up for a dish of profiteroles and fought for a seat at tiny marble-topped tables, if one was free, or ate standing up if there was no sitting room, so great was their addiction to the pâtisserie’s chocolate-drenched specialty.
“The newcomers have no idea that the Pearl was Rum,” said Fanis, stopping short. “They don’t know that almost every shop on this street was Rum. After the pogrom, when the cloth from all these shops was shredded into strips and the stinking shoes of the criminals were left in the streets to fuse with dried fruits, cheeses, and smashed refrigerator parts, I passed by here and recognized the Pearl’s pastries in the mess. That was where I used to take my sweetheart.” Fanis took a deep breath, blinked away the tears that were stinging his eyes, and resumed walking. “Haven’t you ever looked for a girl in Athens?”
“I can’t get used to the people over there,” said Kosmas, looking at his watch again.
Fanis sighed. “Foreigners here in our own place, foreigners there twice over. That’s our lot.” He pointed to a black shirt worn by a mannequin in the display window of a trendy shop. “Tomorrow you must come here by yourself and get some casual shirts for afternoon tea. Black, not striped, and Armani. I couldn’t pull off Armani, but you can. And start going to a gym. Girls don’t like tummies nowadays.” Fanis quickened his pace. “Suits, however, are another matter. One must never buy a suit off the peg. Tailor-made is the only way to go, for a true gentleman, that is.”
They turned into a dim side street and entered a shop marked with an overhanging sign: “Hüsnü Mirza’s Custom-made Suits and Shirts.” Bald Hüsnü set down the monstrous scissors with which he had been cutting a bolt of poplin. His thick gold wedding band flashed as he took a pen from his shirt pocket and said in Turkish, “Hoş geldiniz, Fanis bey.” Welcome, Mr. Fanis.
Fanis shifted gears into the language of the outside world: “Well we find you.”
Hüsnü picked up the phone, ordered three teas from the local concession, and sat down with his clients on wooden stools at the center of the shop. Above the counter, next to the de rigueur image of Atatürk, were two midcentury photographs of a fair woman with a bouffant hairdo and an older man with thick glasses.
“Your parents?” asked Kosmas.
“Oh, no,” said Hüsnü, “the original owner and his daughter. Both Greek citizens. I began working here when I was twelve and took over when they were deported. Pera was beautiful back then, wasn’t it, Mr. Fanis? Now it’s filled with outsiders and peasants. You can’t even walk in Tarlabaşı without fear of being mugged.”
The tea runner stepped into the shop and distributed full glasses with red and white thumbprint saucers.
“You haven’t been in for some time, Mr. Fanis,” said Hüsnü.
“I haven’t had reason to. What’s the use of a new shirt with no one to wear it for?”
Hüsnü peered over his wire-rimmed glasses. “I’ve missed you. You’re my inspiration.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You used to eat in that cheap Circassian restaurant across the way with some very nice-looking ladies.”
“What kind did you expect to see me with? Ugly ones? And those young ladies weren’t dates. They were just friends.”
“Of course, brother. I assumed so. Now, tell me, what can I do for you today?”
“We need a suit for the boy, but we don’t want one of those shiny gray things with the stitching showing that all the young men without taste are wearing nowadays. We want something elegant. Not exactly the kind that I would wear, but along those lines. And he’ll also need two shirts.”
“Let’s measure him,” said Hüsnü, pulling the tape from his neck.
A minute later Kosmas was standing like an awkward giant with his arms raised while Hüsnü measured his hips, waist, chest, legs, shoulders, and arms. The tailor wrote down the measurements, removed his bifocals, and said, “I assume it will be a drape cut?”
“Of course,” said Fanis. “Double-breasted.”
“I’d prefer single,” said Kosmas. “Double seems too 1980s.”
Fanis glared at him. He himself had never worn a double-breasted suit. It was for exactly that reason that he had suggested the style for Kosmas: he wanted the boy to look good, but not too good. “But you’re tall,” he said. “Double is better for a tall man.”
“With all due respect,” said Hüsnü, “I have to agree with our young friend. I’ve always considered single classier. And it works very well for tall men if it has two buttons instead of three. What do you think about the color?”
“Navy,” said Fanis. “But with some detail.”
“What about brown?” said Kosmas.
The tailor replaced his bifocals and pulled a bolt of all-brown plaid from one of the upper shelves. “I have just the thing.”
Fanis ran the edge between his fingers. “Very fine,” he said. “But I don’t know if it’s right for him.”
Hüsnü draped the ends of two fabric bolts over Kosmas’s shoulders and turned him toward the mirror. “The subtle blue plaid of this beaver brown will add width while playing down your height. The navy is also a classy color, but, in my opinion, the brown suits you better.”
Kosmas rotated one shoulder forward, then the other.
“Definitely the navy,” said Fanis, knowing that it would make Kosmas look like an obelisk.
“The beaver brown plaid,” said Kosmas.
Disobedient worm, thought Fanis. How dare he disregard my opinion?
“Right,” said Hüsnü. “Brown plaid it is. Now for the shirts.”
“I like the one you’re wearing,” said Kosmas. “Blue with a white collar and cuffs. What do you think, Mr. Fanis, would it go?”
“I suppose. But you must have a good all-white.”
“And the price?” asked Kosmas.
“Shall I call for more tea?” asked the tailor.
“It’s a quarter past seven,” said Kosmas. “I think we’d better—”
“Thank you, we’d be happy to take another glass,” said Fanis.
The tailor punched a few numbers into his calculator, wrote a figure on a piece of paper, and spun it toward his client. Kosmas took a sharp breath and said, “It’s a lot.”
“Did I tell you that Kosmas is my nephew?” said Fanis. A little white lie always facilitated negotiations.
The tailor immediately crossed out the first figure and wrote a new, significantly reduced number. “I’ll add a couple of pocket squares on the house. I always recommend them for tall men.”
Kosmas capitulated. “If I get the girl, it will be worth it.”
“I’ll have it ready by Saturday,” said Hüsnü. “You can wear it to church on Sunday. It will be like you stepped back in time to the days when ladies went about in hats and pearls and men wouldn’t dare be seen in the Grand Avenue if they weren’t wearing their best suits and ties. I’m telling you, this suit will seduce any woman. Now, Mr. Fanis, are we making something for you as well?”
“Yes, two shirts. One for the courtship and one for my wedding. Nobody knows it yet, but I’m going to be married.” Fanis turned to Kosmas, who was staring in surprise, and added in Greek, “You must keep it a secret, son, and not ask any questions.”
By the time they left Hüsnü’s shop, it was going on eight. Even if Daphne had gone to Neighbor’s House, she would be leaving soon. Just to make sure that the boy missed her, he said, “Now for an important det
ail. The ties.”
They headed toward the Galatasaray Lycée and ducked into a shop with a vitrine full of large silk scarves portraying Ottoman palace and market scenes. Fanis marched straight to the men’s tie counter, put on his most charming smile for the well-dressed woman who offered to assist them, and displayed his index finger, around which he had tied a number of brown, white, and blue threads.
“May I have your advice, miss?” he said. “This is the color of the young man’s suit, and these are the colors of our shirts. We just ordered them, tailor-made. I always take threads with me. It helps me match the ties.”
“What an ingenious trick, sir. And what a discerning eye for color. Such a rich brown, such a beautiful gray-blue.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got. How about that one in the cabinet behind you? The brown on brown stripe high up in the corner?”
Fanis took a good look at the clerk’s backside while she stretched to reach the tie. He decided that he would need to see a lot of ties from the upper cabinet, one by one.
After the thirteenth, Kosmas pointed to the clock and said, “Mr. Fanis, it’s getting late.”
“Young people,” said Fanis. “Always in such a hurry. They don’t realize that the finer things in life take time. Now, how about those over there—”
“Mr. Fanis, if you want to stay, perhaps I should pay for my ties.”
A killjoy if ever there was one, Fanis thought. There’s no way he’ll get the girl.
Fanis turned to the saleswoman, smiled, and said, “I’ve tired you enough, miss. You’ve been most helpful. Let’s wrap up those four. I don’t want to be impolite by keeping my friend waiting.”
They left the silk shop with two new ties each, shook hands, and separated. Kosmas proceeded up the Grand Avenue. Fanis turned down Yeni Çarşı Street and stopped abruptly when he spotted a mustachioed man of roughly his own age sitting on a stool and scattering seed for his three chickens and one rooster. Fanis plastered himself against the corner building and peered round into the byway. The man wore mirrored glasses and a smart hat with the brim turned up at the back. Fanis observed the way he slouched, his legs spread wide and his belly hanging between them. The abrupt motion of the wrist was familiar. The Panama hat with a blue band was familiar. The man looked over his shoulder and called through the open door in Turkish, “Çay hazır mı?” Is the tea ready? At that moment, Fanis was certain he had found the man responsible for his fiancée Kalypso’s rape during the 1955 pogrom.
A Recipe for Daphne Page 5
