“Don’t worry. Liturgy is not a train,” Aunt Gavriela said, when Daphne woke up late. “Besides, it’s Pentecost Sunday. We won’t be out of the church before half past twelve, and the tea will drag on even longer.”
They dressed, enjoyed a quick coffee and a leisurely walk, and slipped into the church just before eleven o’clock. After collecting bunches of walnut branches from a table in the narthex, they entered the nave and settled into the stasidia at the base of an arch. Daphne turned toward her left and had a good look at the ornate carved pulpit and its mahogany staircase, which wound tightly around a green faux-marble column. At the column’s base a tall man in a russet suit stood with legs spread and one hand clasping the opposite wrist. Every so often he pulled his shoulders backward. Could it be? Daphne lowered her prescription sunglasses from the top of her head. Yes, it was Kosmas Xenidis, the mama’s boy baker, looking surprisingly . . . hot. Before Daphne could take her eyes off him, he nodded in her direction like a tanguero delivering a subtle invitation to dance. She nodded back, then tried to refocus on the liturgy. Mr. Fanis had a deep, melodious voice. He drew out single syllables through various notes, as if he wanted to express a full range of human emotion: sadness, despair, hope, joy. What a relief from the cold, untraditional choirs and funereal-sounding organs that had become fashionable back home.
Gavriela dropped her bunch of walnut branches on the marble floor, spread a handkerchief over them, and knelt on top. Everyone else in the church did the same. The first set of Pentecostal prayers was only mildly uncomfortable, but by the second set, the veins of the walnut leaves were digging into Daphne’s bare knees. During the third and final set of kneeling supplications, the bishop began choking up. “Because, Lord,” the bishop prayed, “the dead will not glorify You and those who live in Hades dare not acknowledge You, but we the living praise and entreat You.”
Daphne looked to her aunt, who was also weeping with closed eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The damn incense,” said Gavriela, wiping her nose. “It always makes my eyes tear.”
“You’re weeping, Auntie, not tearing.”
Gavriela sniffled. “It’s the dead. They’ve become too many. And we don’t have any children to replace them.”
“You have me.”
“Do I?”
Daphne squeezed her aunt’s hand but said nothing.
At the close of the service, the bishop delivered a short sermon about the survival of the Rum community: “When Leonidas, King of the Spartans, went forth to battle the Persians at Thermopylae with a force of only three hundred men, someone asked how he planned to defeat an enemy so numerous with so few. Leonidas replied, ‘If you think I am going to fight by numbers, then the whole of Greece would be insufficient to match the Persians, but if I am going to fight by courage, then even this number is sufficient.’”
“You see?” said Daphne to her aunt. “Even this number is sufficient.”
“Time will tell,” said Gavriela.
The bishop gave the dismissal. The congregation lined up at the foot of his throne to receive the blessed antidoron bread. Kosmas joined Daphne at the back of the line. “I wanted to apologize for my mother’s bad behavior yesterday,” he said. The sleeve of his silky suit jacket brushed against Daphne’s wrist as they shook hands. “She also wanted to apologize, but—”
“Seriously?” said Daphne. She took a good look at Kosmas. His right eyebrow was raised, almost as if he was teasing her—or, worse, making fun. She’d noticed that expression at Neighbor’s House but hadn’t taken it personally. Now it puzzled her. Gavriela poked her in the back. Daphne changed the subject: “Mr. Fanis is a fabulous cantor, isn’t he?”
Kosmas nodded yes and made a polite gesture for Daphne to precede him. “Ladies first,” he said. But as soon as they’d received their antidoron, he resumed his apologies: “Mama’s knees were hurting her. That’s why she couldn’t make it today. She sends her regards.”
Daphne stopped chewing her dry, tasteless bread square, raised her own eyebrows, and said, “Hmm. Likewise.”
A short blond in a hat waved a white glove. “Good morning, Kosmaki! What a fine suit!” The blond hobbled toward them as fast as she could and stood on tiptoe to kiss Kosmas. “And who have we here?”
“Daphne,” said Kosmas. “From America, but one of ours.”
The pale woman slipped one arm through the crook of Daphne’s elbow and took Kosmas’s forearm with her other hand. “I’m Rita Tereza. The bishop told me not to let you get away.” Rita Tereza whisked Daphne and Kosmas across the courtyard as quickly as her unmatched legs would take her. Along the way, she rattled: “Daphne, did you know that Kosmas and I are great friends? I’m sure we’ll become great friends too. One of the ladies told me you’re a teacher. I’m a speech therapist! Which gives us lots to talk about.” She ushered Daphne to a free chair in the tea room, next to Mr. Dimitris the journalist, and pulled her own chair close to Daphne’s.
So. Kosmas had a girlfriend. That was why he had given Daphne the business card and not asked for her phone number. He’d only meant to be polite. And perhaps to gain a new customer.
“Have you two known each other for a long time?” said Daphne.
“Oh, yes,” said Rita Tereza.
“Not quite,” said Kosmas. He pulled out a chair near the head of the table. “Daphne will be cramped there in the corner. She’d better come over here.”
“She’s fine where she is. Come sit with us, Kosmaki.” Rita Tereza patted the empty seat on her left. “Are you on Facebook, Daphne? If you are, look me up. There’s a darling photo of me and Kosmas from last Sunday.”
Kosmas leaned over the table and picked up Daphne’s tea. “The bishop always wants guests to sit close to him,” he said.
Was this a troubled relationship?
“If that’s what the bishop wants,” said Daphne, transferring herself to the chair that Kosmas held for her, “then I ought to move.”
Before Rita Tereza had a chance to object, the bishop swept in, buttoning the collar of his blue cassock. He made his way around the table, stopped in front of Kosmas, and said in a low voice, “What a fine suit that is. Such elegant fabric, such precise tailoring. Italian?”
“Hüsnü Mirza,” said Kosmas, pulling in his tummy and puffing out his chest. “On Balo Street.”
The bishop winked. Fanis, now looking like a debonair Einstein in a sleek black suit, skipped into the tea room, grabbed the empty chair on Daphne’s right side, and said, “What do you say, Daphne dear? Did I do a good job today?”
“It was a real treat, Mr. Fanis. You have a lovely voice.”
“I do my best. The ‘Kalofonikos Eirmos’—the piece I was chanting during the distribution of the antidoron—was for you. It’s a very special hymn that we use only on holidays.”
“What’s that?” said the bishop.
“The chanting,” said Fanis. “Our guest enjoyed it.”
“Yes, but our feet didn’t,” said the bishop. “Anyway, you haven’t introduced our guest.”
“My niece Daphne,” said Gavriela, from the other end of the oval table. “From Miami.”
“Miami,” repeated the bishop. “Now there’s a city. I toured the whole country—New York, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco. We also went to a desert town with casinos, grandiose hotels, and dancing girls. What was the name of it?”
Daphne smiled at the thought of an Istanbul bishop playing the slots in Sin City. “Las Vegas?”
“Las Vegas! What a fun place that was! Now, Miss Daphne, tell me, are you married?”
Before Daphne had a chance to reply, Gavriela said, “Not yet.”
“Have you moved back to the City?” said the bishop.
“I’m just—”
Gavriela interrupted, in an insinuating singsong tone: “She’s thinking about it!”
Kosmas offered Daphne a plate of dry, stale-looking cheese pastries.
“No, thanks,” she said. “My aunt stuffs me with c
heese pies every morning.”
“Just like my mother.” Kosmas passed them to the grizzly, cigarette-stinking priest. “I bet you can’t stand the sight of them.”
“Just about.”
The bishop’s pot-bellied, mustachioed assistant approached with a hot-water pot in one hand and a steaming teapot in the other. “More tea?” he said in Turkish.
“Thank you,” said Daphne. “Very light, please.”
The man poured an inch of dark tea and paused before topping up with water. “Is that all right?”
“Perfect. And might I have a glass of water?” said Daphne, with a side-nod.
“Of course.”
Kosmas offered the sugar bowl. Daphne placed her hand on her heart in a gesture of polite refusal. “I drink mine plain.”
“Your Turkish is superb, Daphne,” said Rita Tereza, whose armpits barely reached the table top. Daphne wondered if they ought to bring her a booster seat.
“Indeed,” said the bishop. He stabbed a quartered sesame ring with his mini-fork and held it in the air. “But it’s not just that. It’s the accent, the intonation, the mannerisms . . . all entirely Turkish.”
“You heard very little, Your Eminence,” said Daphne. “I make loads of mistakes in conversation.”
“Grammatical errors are one thing,” said Rita Tereza. “Mannerisms and accent are another. You must have spent quite a lot of time with Turks.”
“Maybe it’s from watching my teachers,” said Daphne, avoiding eye contact with the bishop. To parry any more delving into her origins, she asked, “Which reminds me, Your Eminence, could you suggest a chocolate shop? My teacher’s birthday is tomorrow.”
Kosmas winced. In her haste to change the subject, Daphne had forgotten that he was a pâtissier: asking about a sweet shop other than his had been bad manners on her part.
“Of course,” said the bishop. “The Savoy has always been one of the best.”
Even worse: the bishop had also forgotten Kosmas’s profession.
“It’s true,” said Rita Tereza. “But the Lily’s mille-feuille is superb.” She smiled flirtatiously at Kosmas. “My grandmother always said that the secret to a good mille-feuille is freshness. It has to be made and eaten on the same day and left at room temperature.”
“Actually,” said Kosmas, “there are many secrets to good mille-feuille. But, Rita Tereza, I thought you didn’t eat sweets?”
Rita Tereza pushed up her glasses. “I ate them until I was twenty-nine. But it seems there are things I don’t know about you, too, Kosmaki. You never mentioned you had an American friend.”
Dimitris, with his briefcase resting on his lap, grinned boyishly. “So what are the secrets to a good mille-feuille, son?”
“The beurrage, for example.” Kosmas grabbed the pile of napkins at the center of the table and ran his finger along the side. “It’s the butter, separating the dough, that creates layers like these, thin as leaves.”
“I’d think the assembly would be the most difficult part,” said Daphne, trying to figure out what sort of relationship Kosmas had with the Mad Hatter albino. If Rita Tereza was indeed his girlfriend, how could he not know that she used to eat sweets? Perhaps they weren’t a couple after all.
“Of course,” said Kosmas, straightening his suit jacket. “It takes years to learn how to cut the pastry without a ruler. Mille-feuille is architecture. It must be symmetrical, squared, and level. If anything is off, it will be a failure, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
Fanis, whose voice was still a little raspy from chanting, said, “Mille-feuille is a princess, but the queen mother was the Balkanik.”
“I asked Uncle Mustafa about that pastry,” said Kosmas. He picked up Daphne’s fallen napkin, gave it to the mustachioed man, and handed Daphne a new one from the stack he had used to demonstrate butter layering. “He described it to me as best he could: the choux pastry, the consistency and flavors of the creams, the unique way in which they were piped. I actually made a first attempt, but it fell short of Uncle Mustafa’s memories. You see, making a good chocolate, cardamom, cinnamon, or pistachio cream isn’t a big deal, but I haven’t been able to figure out how so many flavors can complement each other in one pastry without turning into a discordant mess.”
“The recipe was lost,” said Fanis. “Anything you make now will be a poor imitation, an impostor Balkanik.”
“Somebody must have written it down,” said Daphne. “Perhaps we could contact the families of other old pastry chefs.”
“Even if the recipe could be found,” said Gavriela, “you have to remember that the Balkanik was a pastry for parties. Where would you eat it now? With which friends? We used to drink our tea every day at five o’clock. We used to play cards on Tuesdays, do something else on Wednesdays, go dancing on Fridays and Saturdays, to church on Sundays, and to the buffets after church. Every day there was something to do, and there was always a pastry to go with it. Now there’s nobody left.”
“Excuse me, Gavriela,” said Fanis, “but who are we? Nobody?”
Without waiting for a reply, Fanis excused himself to the restroom. He could take only so much of that “we’re finished” rubbish. Even if he sometimes thought the same things, he didn’t want to hear about them in the church tea room. For God’s sake, it was the only place where he could almost pretend that they weren’t near the end.
He climbed the stairs to the hot, rancid lavatory, fumbled for the light switch, and unzipped his pants. At least he could still see his nicely circumcised penis. His uncle had always said that you were in fine form as long you could look down from a standing position and see your pecker. Until the age of seventeen, Fanis had suffered from phimosis. His tight foreskin hadn’t bothered him at all until he reached puberty and began to masturbate, and even then it had only caused him a small amount of discomfort. On the day that he fell in love with Kalypso, however, he was obliged to tell his uncle that something was wrong.
It was the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 1952. The entire neighborhood was perfumed with the scents of mastic and mahleb baking in Saint Basil cakes. A light, feathery snow was falling, and hordes of children had filled the streets, singing carols and collecting baksheesh. Fanis was seventeen and in the first year of his apprenticeship with Mr. Yorgos, the neighborhood antiques merchant. Kalypso, just fifteen, was one of the carolers. She wore a heavy wool coat and a red beret. A brown braid hung over her shoulder. Her voice—a sweet mezzo soprano—rose above the others and passed straight through Fanis.
That evening, while reimagining Kalypso beneath his thick winter blankets, Fanis had a date with his right hand, which he affectionately called Madame Fist. But his phimosis was so painful that he wasn’t able to finish. The next day he told his uncle. On January 4, 1953, Fanis was circumcised at the German Hospital. His penis became a clean, free, handsome acorn, just like those of his Jewish and Muslim friends. He hadn’t had any other problems since, except for those few weak erections of late, and now, for the first time in the church lavatory, a reduced flow.
As Fanis was shaking it, he felt a contracting pain in his chest. An image of Kalypso’s braid flashed before him. His eyes overflowed with tears. There it was: uncontrolled weeping. Another symptom of vascular dementia. Perhaps he shouldn’t have burned those prescriptions.
Fanis rezipped his pants, washed his hands with the bit of dirty soap resting on the edge of the sink, and covered his eyes with wet fingers. Then he noticed the muffled sounds of a radio. They were coming from somewhere outside the church complex.
That was how it had started, with the announcement, at half past four in the afternoon, on September 6, 1955, from the Ankara radio station: Atatürk’s birthplace in Thessaloniki had been bombed. Fanis had heard it at Mr. Yorgos’s antiques shop while beating out an antique Bergama carpet in the back garden. The news made him go to the front of the shop and look across the way, toward the windows of the mint-green mosque, but he pushed the thought out of his head and returned to his work. At a quar
ter to five, a boy passed selling the Istanbul Express. Fanis bought a copy and beheld the falsified photos of the damage to Atatürk’s first house. A few seconds later he heard hateful shouts resounding from the direction of Sıraselviler Avenue: “They destroyed the house of our father! Infidels! Cyprus is Turkish!”
Fanis called out to his boss: “Do you hear?”
Mr. Yorgos emerged from his office. “Lower the shutter,” he said.
Mr. Yorgos was a practical man, and he already had a practical solution to whatever little disturbance might occur. He called one of the toughs to whom he regularly gave protection money. They would pass once per month for their allowance, always with the same assurance: “Whatever happens, we’re here.” It was understood that Mr. Yorgos was buying protection from the thugs themselves rather than from any unknown enemy, but calling them was worth a shot.
To his surprise, Mr. Yorgos was told that two men would be dispatched within the hour. While waiting, he emptied the safe of cash and stuffed half of it into his underpants and the other half into his trouser pocket. He bound some of the more expensive jewelry to his chest and to Fanis’s. Then he called a friend in Taksim. “Close up,” said the friend. “They’re going mad.” By six o’clock, the toughs had arrived and, true to their word, they kept the shop safe. Fanis left thinking only of his mother, who had been widowed when he was eleven. It was natural that he should go to her instead of trying to find Kalypso. In any case, Fanis didn’t believe that things would get as bad as they did.
Weeping in the stench of the church lavatory and unable to relieve himself, Fanis couldn’t justify his lack of thought for Kalypso as he had taken his precautions, gone home, and tipped the doorman of his building with some cash that Mr. Yorgos had stuffed into his pocket “in case of need.”
A Recipe for Daphne Page 9
