by Joan Fleming
If the graveyard is nearby, the bier is carried by four bearers and followed by the imam and the immediate family, the professional mourners having done all that is required of them. If the graveyard is some distance away, the bier is carried on a pale green hearse with the rather jolly look of an old-fashioned ice-cream cart.
Miasma smiled thinly. ‘My dear Nuri bey, at home, perhaps, Valance was a Christian, but here she was as I am.’ Many times she had accompanied her mistress to the mosque and had prayed beside her and with her in one of the niches along the walls reserved for the women, for the women may not pray with the men on the great flat stretch of beautifully carpeted floor upon which the men prostrate themselves in absolute humility before Allah.
‘I have, many years ago, bought a grave for myself up there.’ Madame pointed towards the back of the house behind which, on the other side of the road, a cemetery ran up and up the hillside for nearly a mile. ‘I have arranged that Valance shall be buried there and when my time comes I shall lie beside her. I am arranging for her to be treated in death exactly as I would wish to be treated. The imam thinks she is a Moslem, and I do not wish that he should think otherwise, Nuri bey. The only way in which I must transgress is in regard to the name of her mother, in order that the imam may cry it aloud as she is put into the grave; as I do not know the name of her mother, and Valance’s name was Marie, which is Christian, I shall tell the imam her mother’s name was Fatima!’
‘That, also, is a Christian name!’
‘You see,’ Madame said benevolently, ‘even that! I cannot do more for my poor maid.’
‘Her people?’
‘Hadji sent a wire immediately to her people in France and later, when we are not so busy, you will write a long letter to them, Nuri bey, under my guidance; we will tell them about her beautiful funeral.’
She wandered towards the cages, lips compressed. ‘I understand them to be an avaricious lot. They will demand the return of all her personal possessions. I may tell you that Valance never spent a lira here. She smuggled all the money she earned in a year out of the country, when she went on her annual holiday, inside her stays, the old rascal!’
It was against Nuri bey’s principles to sit when a woman was standing but his reaction to the shock caused an unaccustomed weakness; he sank on to the love seat, feeling as though all the stuffing had gone out of him. It was exhausting to travel in the flick of a bird’s wing, to the heights and back again in as short a time. He brought out his handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands which felt unpleasantly moist and clammy.
‘A fine death, my lion, do you not think?’ she murmured at last.
No, Nuri bey did not agree. He thought it a fearful death; it reminded him too strongly of the many, many women, young and middle-aged and old, who had died by unavoidably filling their lungs with the icy water of the Bosphorus. Such deaths belonged to the bad days of old Turkey when human life counted for nothing and intrigue and jealousy and ambition regulated human behaviour.
‘Come, my friend, admit truthfully that if one must die in a foreign country, and as a servant in that country, it is better to have the ceremonies of that country attend one’s funeral rather than be bundled out of the house like a mere dead rat. Mourners have been hired. Hadji will pin the notice to the front door, the imam will be paid handsomely for his services and tomorrow morning soon after daylight she will be safely in the good ground. It is costing me a fine lot, I can tell you. What more could I do for my faithful friend and servant?’
Nuri bey composed himself more comfortably. He opened The Times and said: ‘We have much to discuss this week. The American Election draws near and it is time for us to examine the qualities of the respective candidates …’
‘No. No. Not today. I am not in the mood. There are more urgent things to be discussed.’
The imam being in the house, Madame was wearing her best day dress, a bright brown satin from a Paris house, heavily embroidered with beads and giving her bent and shapeless figure a certain dignity and even splendour. She was wearing a number of rings on her fingers and a dirty diamond necklace. She turned from the bird-cages and hobbled across the room, standing before Nuri bey and putting her chilly bird-like claws on his already cold hands.
‘My friend, my lion, there is a small favour that I must ask of you now that my poor Valance is gone. Will you go to the airport and deliver something for me to a young friend passing through?’
‘Tonight?’
‘He arrives by the Comet from England at eight o’clock this evening.’
He had been invited for coffee with an English friend from the British Council. He hesitated.
‘I am in great trouble,’ the old woman pleaded. ‘I cannot leave the house with the corpse of my poor companion waiting for burial, in torment.’
‘Hadji could go!’
‘And leave me alone here with the corpse? Nuri bey, how could you suggest so cruel a thing? Alone here with my dead Valance!’
Though Nuri bey was unconvinced that Miasma would turn a hair at such an experience, he could understand that it was conventionally undesirable but still he hesitated. ‘I would have time, indeed, I would make time, in the morning …’
She stamped her foot impatiently. ‘The aeroplane of Zenobia Airlines is passing through. It goes on to Hong Kong. I have something all ready to send to my great friend there.’
Because he knew that she could make life pretty unbearable for the person of whom she asked a favour if they did not instantly comply, Nuri bey agreed.
Why did anyone bother to do anything for her? he asked himself unhappily. She was not charming, nor kind, nor generous, nor beautiful, nor appealing, nor pathetically in need of help. She appeared to be neither greatly upset nor seriously stricken by the death of her personal servant and friend. But she had a regal autocracy that was very difficult to stand up to. She acted upon a kind of divine right to demand and receive from people instant sacrifice and there would seem to be no getting away from it.
In the entrance hall at the airport he would see a thin young Englishman of medium height with dark hair; he would give him a small fibre case with Madame Miasma’s compliments. As the young man would be looking for Valance, Nuri bey must appear to be waiting for someone, it might be that he would have to be the first to speak. All he would need to say was that Madame Miasma had asked him to come. There was no need to mention death or disaster.
‘You understand, Nuri bey? That is all that is necessary. He will take my case from you and return to the aeroplane. You will have done me a very great favour and one day, as I have said before, one day, my lion, you will be rewarded!’
When Nuri bey left the house, the imam and his staff had done their duties. The bier stood in the entrance hall, by the front door, almost athwart the entrance, at the requisite angle to Mecca, so that Nuri bey had to skirt it as he made his way out. For a moment he stood and looked down at the earthly remains of the French maid Valance, now a mere corpse, strangely slim and absolutely anonymous beneath the pale green pall.
This hurry to bury the dead, he thought as he gently closed the front door behind him and stepped amongst the mourners on his way out, how could one be sure that one was not buried alive?
CHAPTER 2
… And yet, he thought, as he sat in the bus rattling along the Ataturk Boulevard, under the aqueduct and through the Southend-Road-like countryside of Thrace, Miasma had any number of friends. For one short glorious period before the First World War she had been married to a Greek ship owner and had known a variety of international celebrities. She had met and talked to the Czar of Russia, the Kaiser, and the Prince of Wales but the beginning of the war had put a sudden end to these halcyon days. Turkey and Greece had been on different sides; she had returned to Istanbul or, as one of her enemies had crudely put it: ‘The Greeks kicked her out.’
The yali on the Bosphorus had belonged to a Vizier of the Sultan’s court and in the dark days of the first war she had been able to buy
it at a bargain price. She settled in with the two plums she had picked from the Greek pie: the French personal maid Valance and a De Dion Bouton motor car or limousine as it was then called, with glass windows which let down with leather straps and brass oil lamps with coloured glass panels at the sides.
Between the wars when Ataturk was wreaking havoc with all the old Turkish shibboleths and Moslem principles were being knocked down as carelessly as fezes were knocked off heads and veils torn from the women’s faces, Madame Miasma’s house became a little haven of stability. Anyone coming new to Istanbul, anxious to get to know people, having a letter of introduction to Madame, would be sure of being accepted into one or two of the best Turkish households.
With the Second World War, the rise of young Turkey and the new capital of Ankara, Madame’s influence waned as Istanbul’s importance as a capital decreased. As the face of her city aged, so did she; now both were showing signs of decrepitude. Unlike Cleopatra, age had withered her and custom had staled her, and in any case she had no infinite variety, she was always the same.
Valance had gone; next it would be the De Dion Bouton which used a great deal of gasoline and was expensive to maintain.
He would have to be careful, Nuri bey mused. Now Valance was gone, he could see himself being charged with all sorts of duties which the Frenchwoman had performed in the past, as, for instance, this unwanted trip to the airport. He would have liked to assure himself that he would never have agreed to it had it not been for the exceptional circumstances but he knew, in his passion for the absolute truth, that he would do anything which Miasma requested of him.
The bus was almost full of American women who seemed to have about three husbands among the lot. They had been staying at the American Hilton Hotel for two days, had done Istanbul and were now going to do the Far East, staying a night or two in Hong Kong, and on to Tokyo and home via the Pacific; the world in a fortnight.
Hatless, in his best brown pin-striped suit which was worn to the point of shininess and with the shabby fibre overnight case which Miasma had given him, Nuri bey looked like their courier, though the thought would never have occurred to him. When the bus arrived they stood up and created a great bustle and fuss lifting the hand luggage down from the rack, calling to one another and talking incessantly in what Nuri bey privately thought of as their parrot-like tones of voice. Surely, he thought, their tongues must be differently shaped from those of other mortals. From their chatter he gathered that the Zenobia Airways Comet had arrived from London and that, when through the customs, they would all join the passengers in the transit lounge before embarking.
He walked into the reception hall, standing some few paces from the main entrance. Was it not over-optimistic to be sure that he would meet the young friend of Miasma? As soon as this thought had passed through his mind, he saw a young man, alone, sauntering to and fro at the far end of the hall. He was watching everyone who came from the bus. Nuri bey watched him. He was clearly waiting for someone and when all the travellers had passed, chattering and laughing and making all the sounds of confusion that travellers in such circumstances make, there was no one left in the reception hall who was so obviously waiting for someone as Nuri bey. The young man looked at him. Not directly but casually, he made his way across and, when he was near enough, Nuri bey could see him staring fixedly at the case in his hand.
Presently, having reassured himself, he came up.
‘Madame Miasma? You are from Madame Miasma?’
Relieved beyond expression, Nuri bey agreed eagerly that he was, indeed, from Madame Miasma. He said that her French companion, Valance, was unable to come to the airport, and as it was too late to alter the arrangement, Madame had asked him to come instead. If he would kindly deliver this case to Madame’s friend in Hong Kong … Nuri bey had heard the name of Madame’s friend from time to time but at the moment it eluded him.
The young man made a face. He was hatless and wore a sports jacket over a pair of smart tapered black trousers. He was smoking, pulling nervously at his cigarette.
‘Is the old woman ill or something?’
‘Which old woman?’
‘The … er … the French companion?’
She had said that all he would need to say was that Madame Miasma had asked him to come. She had asked if he understood and he realized that she had meant he was not to mention, under any circumstances, her death. He hesitated.
‘Is she ill?’
Nuri bey still hesitated. He could not say yes, he equally could not say no. He compromised in a shrug, the very essence of the Levant which the French epitomize so well with the expression: ni l’un, ni l’autre.
The young man seemed to understand. ‘Just one of those things,’ he said.
Nuri bey looked puzzled. ‘One of what things?’ he asked, preparing for an informative discussion.
The young man took the case and dropped his cigarette stub on the ground, pressing it out with his foot. ‘Well … thanks a lot, Mr—er—’ He gave Nuri bey a brisk nod, ‘Be seeing you,’ and hurried away.
Incurious about his immediate surroundings though he was, certain questions did rear their ugly heads in Nuri bey’s mind, only to be discouraged. Anyway, it was now no further business of his.
Be seeing you … what did that mean? Was it a brand new idiom?
And now to the return bus. It was almost completely dark, in the time after sunset and before moonrise. Nuri bey was about to go out through the doors to find the return bus when there was the sound of a shot, at least he thought it was a shot, and when it was followed by a series of shots he paused, knowing that something serious must be happening in the transit lounge behind the big double doors.
The girl selling sweetmeats at a kiosk, two airport officials, a couple of porters and Nuri bey ran across the reception hall and through the big double doors, down the stairs. In the transit lounge the noise and confusion reminded Nuri bey of the fuss made by a lot of laying hens when disturbed. An American matron rushed up to him hysterically and clung to his arm.
‘Oh, oh! Help! Mur … r … der!’
‘What happens?’ Nuri bey asked.
‘There’s an assassin around here …’ she shrieked. All the males in the place seemed to have run out on to the tarmac, except one, a smallish square figure lying by the bar and the two bartenders who had climbed over the bar and were pulling at him in an evident attempt to be helpful. Several women who had thrown themselves flat on their faces at the sound of shooting were now picking themselves up and checking that they still had their handbags.
Then spying a friend, she yelled: ‘Leonore, hi there, Leonore!’ and released Nuri bey for whom she had no further use. ‘You all right, honey?’ he heard her anxiously asking her friend.
Nuri bey turned away and slowly mounted the stairs, feeling unutterably sad and melancholy. A terrible depression descended upon him because human beings did not know how to live their lives. Shouting and shrieking and shooting and hurting each other when it was all so unnecessary.
The entrance hall was completely deserted, even the bus drivers had run to the scene of action. Nuri bey walked up and down the line of some half-dozen buses, decided to take the one that was lighted and was about to pull himself up into it when someone sped out of the reception hall and stood in the exit, poised like a bird in flight, alighting for a moment, wondering which way to go.
She caused a strange sensation in Nuri bey’s heart because she was young and to be young is to be beautiful and it is beautiful to be young, or so Nuri bey had always thought.
And in her hand, he could see clearly in the light shining from the lamp above her, she was carrying the overnight case which he had brought to the airport with him.
At least, he thought it was. He moved a little closer. It was an anonymous-looking case with nothing distinguished about it other than that it was clearly an English-made case, or rather a case not made in Turkey. Shabby, plain and perfectly ordinary, it was certainly the case which Miasma
had handed to him a few hours ago.
Any ordinary man would have cried: ‘Hi, what are you doing with that case?’ But Nuri bey was no ordinary man. It was his habit not to ask a direct question unless absolutely necessary and he did not consider it necessary to do so now. If he waited patiently, in time the answer to most questions would be forthcoming.
She was behaving as he would expect anyone to behave who had just witnessed a shooting incident; breathless, the pupils of her eyes enormous, the handbag on her arm hanging open displayed an untidy jumble of letters, passport and articles of make-up. Nuri bey stared at the overnight case. There must be hundreds of cases exactly the same but it was impossible not to recognize the case which he had had in his hand and on his knee since it was handed to him by Miasma as he left the yali. In the local bus, on the ferry boat, in the restaurant in Eminonu, on the bus to Pera and in the airport bus, that case had been with him for the best part of three hours and he knew it was the same one; it was the only certainty in a very uncertain world.
The unaccustomed feeling in his heart was superseded by some practical considerations; it was his absolute duty to remain beside that case with which he had been entrusted, so long as it was in the hands of someone unauthorized rather than those of the young man for whom it had been intended. It was probably that she had stolen the bag during the fracas in the waiting hall.
She ran her free hand through her hair, saying: ‘Oh, my lord! Oh, my lord!’ Any other man would have said: ‘Can I help you?’ but Nuri bey simply stated that he would help her, in English because she would almost certainly be either English or American, probably the latter.
