by Joan Fleming
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘You promised to telephone to Nuri bey!’
‘Hadji has gone to do that.’
Liar, Jenny thought. She looked at her clothes, black satin coat with a mink collar, black lace mantilla over her blue hair, rings on her fingers to the number of seven in all, a three-strand necklace of pearls round her neck.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ she snapped suddenly.
‘I was comparing you with my great-grandmother,’ Jenny answered shakily. ‘I am surprised that you can be bothered with all this plotting and planning and arranging … at your age!’
‘Why at my age?’
‘So near death, you ought to be waiting peacefully, with folded hands, not clutching a revolver ready to shoot me in the back. I mean, it’s absolutely laughable; my great-grandmother will never believe me when I tell her.’
‘Tell her! You will be lucky if you ever see her again.’
‘There you go!’
There was another long silence during which she was evidently thinking over what Jenny had said. ‘There is yet another difference between your great-grandmother and me, my child. Your great-grandmother was always looked after.’
Jenny considered. ‘Yes,’ she conceded finally, ‘I suppose that is so.’
‘And I—I have had to fight every inch of the way.’
‘What way?’
‘The way into society, into the good life.’ La vie belle, she called it. ‘I was born nothing, simply another girl wanted by no one.’
‘Like the kittens here in Istanbul!’
‘Exactement! Like the little cats. But much, much worse, I was ugly. If you are beautiful, everything will come your way, everything. If you are ugly and born as I was, you have to fight for your woman’s rights inch by inch.’
‘Not always,’ Jenny put in uncomfortably, wondering about her own looks, ‘if you are reasonably pleasant, things aren’t too bad!’
‘Pleasant!’ Miasma exclaimed with an excoriating sneer. ‘Voyons! A woman must have either money or looks.’
‘I have neither.’
‘Exactement,’ she agreed nastily. ‘That is no doubt why you are in the position in which you now find yourself. And as for death, which you said I am so near … who knows who is the nearer to death … you, or me?’
Jenny felt cold and unhappy. ‘I suppose you think that if I had been beautiful, or an heiress, Tony wouldn’t have … abandoned me, like this.’
‘Yes, that is so.’
‘So you think Tony was never more than mildly attracted by me and that, when the point came, he used me as a stooge?’
‘I do not know what a stooge is.’
‘He made use of me, if you like.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘You think that is why he asked me to go to Hong Kong with him? Just so that, if necessary, he could make me carry the case back on to the plane for him?’
‘Certainly. He must have been warned that the security regulations were being tightened and that a more careful watch was being kept on the crews. Or maybe he knew the detective who was waiting in the lounge bar.’
‘I see. Then you don’t think he loves me at all.’
She replied with a shrug. ‘Go to sleep, my girl,’ she said, ‘you have a long day in front of you, you will need rest.’
‘The day won’t be one second longer than any other day!’ Jenny snapped back irritably.
‘Perhaps not,’ Miasma returned smoothly, ‘perhaps I should have said, trying day.’
Jenny stared out moodily at the black, heaving Bosphorus. Tony … Tony … Tony … she thought of him dispassionately: short and slim and dark, his face tanned; his dissolute looks, fascinating to some women; the hare-lip with which he had been born, well operated on, the final effect being to give his mouth a hitched look so that he always seemed to be very slightly jeering; his nasal voice with the faint American accent fashionable now amongst some young people. Not a man’s man, not wholly a woman’s man but possibly Jenny’s man.
He liked the things money bought, Paris, Jaguar cars, chukka boots, plushy restaurants, luxury flatlets, cosmopolitan hotels, and, Jenny painfully had to admit, women to match. How could she ever have thought she could live up to him?
She stirred uneasily; she hated being awake between midnight and dawn; it was a time of truth, or was it simply truth without the necessary dressing of optimism?
Miasma looked at the small diamond watch on her wrist. ‘Half-past three,’ she said, ‘Hadji should be back and then we go.’
‘To Tony?’
No answer.
‘Why all this stupid mystery? Why can’t you tell me your plans?’
Madame answered gently, softly, yet firmly. ‘I want to know where the case is. Tell me that and you may go back to Nuri bey or wherever you want to go. Now.’
For a few moments Jenny contemplated making-up something to give herself time. She could invent somewhere that she could have hidden the case but that hiding-place could only be in Nuri bey’s house and, as far as she could see, would involve Nuri bey much further and only give her a few hours’ respite. ‘You don’t mean now,’ she argued, ‘because you would have to confirm that the case was where I said.’
Madame conceded that point and added: ‘It seems to me you have that stupid tenacity of all your countrymen. In spite of danger, against all advice, common sense and wisdom, you will stick to your own stupid ideas.’
‘You are absolutely wrong this particular time. I have told you, and I feel it is you who are stupid, Madame, because you refuse to believe me. I really threw it into the Golden Horn; you don’t happen to want to believe I did, so you don’t believe it and you’re putting yourself to all sorts of trouble unnecessarily because you’ll never see that case again in this life, you won’t.’
What happened next had a curious dreamlike quality. Sitting beside Madame, her head had begun to nod in sleep when Hadji suddenly appeared: ‘Come!’
Madame made a movement as though to take her arm but Jenny walked stiffly beside her, slightly aloof. It was still fairly dark but there was a lot going on at the water side. A fog hung over the Bosphorus so that it was not possible to see anything to the East but as they embarked into a dolmus rowing-boat, with two other people waiting to be rowed across, Jenny could see by the lights from the street that the Galata Bridge which should have stretched above them, was no longer there, the span having swung round to admit larger ships into the Golden Horn. The breath of the people in the boat blew out into the chill morning air in balloons, a fog horn sounded its forlorn moan, an occasional disembodied cry wavered through the mist to be neutralized by the bustling sound of an engine from a passing ferry boat. Jenny did not even ask where they were going; she was beyond caring.
On the Stamboul side they took a waiting taxi and drove sharply uphill. The large dusty open space used as a football ground in front of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque was crowded with people and floodlit.
‘They are waiting to watch a hanging,’ Madame said dispassionately.
‘A what?’
‘A murderer is to be hanged,’ she explained, climbing energetically out of the taxi and handing Hadji the money to pay the driver. ‘These people have been waiting all night.’
‘Do you mean a public hanging?’
The old woman moved along until she was in a satisfactory position for seeing; Jenny, taller than the crowd, looked over their heads. She stared, stupefied, at the scaffold, consisting of three long poles arranged in tripod form, like the sticks from which hang the traditional witch’s cauldron, the floodlighting beams meeting at this point.
‘The idam sehpasi,’ Madame pointed out, ‘or the three feet for the condemnation to death. Look, standing in that circle round are the soldiers who have been there all night, and policemen to keep order.’ There were also boys with trays and baskets selling mineral water, tea, large wafer biscuits, roast chestnuts and shouting their wares: ‘Gazos! … gazos! … gazos! … simit! �
� simit! … simit! … çay!’ and water sellers with their enormous metal canisters strapped to their backs crying: Souk! Soo … souk!’
Relaxed and with the air of one on an outing, Madame bought small glasses of tea for the three of them. ‘Why have you brought me here?’ Jenny asked across the glass of tea which she sipped gratefully.
‘It is necessary that you should take life seriously, my child.’
‘You won’t frighten me,’ she returned defiantly. ‘I’m not completely idiotic, you know. They wouldn’t do this to me, whatever I’d done. I’d be taken home and hanged in a civilized manner.’
‘But not Tony,’ Madame returned smoothly, ‘and we hang also accessories.’
‘Let’s go,’ Jenny suggested, ‘I do not desire …’ but her words faded out. They were now part of the crowd which was pressing in as a small red car drove through, along a lane lined with policemen, followed by three official cars.
‘There is the imam,’ Madame pointed, ‘on this occasion he may wear clothes of office.’ He was distinguishable by the fez he wore with a black scarf over it and a simple black surplice. He was talking earnestly with the prisoner, a poor little example of humanity, obviously shivering in the chill air, his legs emerging thinly from his shapeless white shirt, his feet in Arab-like shoes, with the heels trodden flat at the back. The imam lighted a cigarette and put it between the prisoner’s lips. An uncouth gipsy-like character now climbed the ladder to the platform and busied himself with the rope. Something was not working satisfactorily, there was a squeak as from a not well-oiled wheel which sounded clearly above the hum of the crowd like a wet finger on the rim of a glass.
The fog horn moaned greyly.
Jenny now found that both Madame and Hadji were holding her by the wrists, exerting a surprisingly firm hold. ‘Let go, I hate being touched!’
‘You hate being touched,’ Madame sneered. ‘You will hate even more what you are going to see. Last month a murderer and his two accomplices were hanged; to be an accessory to murder is as dangerous as to be a murderer here. Now, look, if you could read Turkish you would read on the placard which they have pinned to the prisoner’s chest what his crime is and what the verdict was.’
The cigarette finished, the prisoner was pushed up the ladder by many helpful hands. The human beings on the scaffold now stood out sharply against the lightening sky beyond. It was like a back curtain for a ballet with the great tripod astride the two figures and Jenny was no more moved than she would be watching a ballet, because of the unreality of it all. Like the Book of Revelations, the scene was overstated and became melodramatic. She was now watching so absorbedly that her mouth was slightly open and she made no attempt to free herself.
The hangman’s movements were economical and un-fussy. In his ordinary well-worn European-style suit he looked like a busy draper or any other kind of shopkeeper performing familiar movements amongst his stock. He slipped the noose over the prisoner’s head, pulling the knot round to the back and tightening it against the back of the neck whilst adjusting it in front well beneath the chin. He then helped him up on to the stool, pulling the spare rope taut and tying it firmly against one of the supports. There was absolute silence now in the square but once more the fog horn sounded. Light was rushing up out of the east, but the deed would be done before dawn.
When everything was to his satisfaction, the hangman kicked the stool vigorously, it toppled over and the prisoner gave several involuntary jerks; there was no sound, though those very near might hear the last exhalation of the life’s breath in a long final sigh.
Jenny looked up at the huge mosque with its six needle-thin minarets piercing the lightened sky like spears challenging the rapidly approaching dawn.
The gipsy hangman peered into the face of his victim, then nipped down the ladder and across to one of the official cars where he would receive prompt payment for his services to the State.
Hadji went for another taxi as the soldiers re-formed and marched away. The crowd began slowly to disperse. Jenny stood quite still, as though mindless. Miasma walked impatiently to and fro to keep warm, her hands thrust into her mink-edged sleeves.
Now that it was fully daylight, the flood-lighting was superfluous and it was turned off. The street lighting was extinguished too. It was time for the first prayer of the day. The muezzin came out, high up on one of the minarets, and leaned over the balustrading, shouting his exhortation with hands cupped to his mouth:
‘Allahu akbar! Lā ilāha illā’llāh!’
Many of the Faithful fell to their knees, touching the ground with their foreheads at the start of their orisons.
More often than not, a Tannoy loud speaker is used to broadcast the call to prayer, but from the Sultan Ahmed Camii the muezzin himself calls and sometimes there are two. His thin high voice sounded across the square with an unearthly delicacy, so that it might have been an assurance of immortality.
Hadji had secured a taxi but a full ten minutes had to pass whilst he prayed, performing with ease and even some grace the movements of kneeling, standing, prostrating himself and again kneeling, with lips moving and eyes closed. Finally, in one movement, surprisingly supple for a small stout man, he leaped from prayer into the holding open of the taxi foor for the ladies to enter.
In manœuvring the taxi into reverse, it was necessary to go much closer to the scaffold, and Jenny, strained face close to the window, saw what was now beyond bearing.
All the drama had gone out of the scene, it became quite hideously real. In full cold daylight the lonely figure hung, still swinging perceptibly.
Jenny was not one to have hysterics but, after a day of considerable tension, she had passed a night in which she had neither slept nor lain down. What she now saw was so bitterly sharp that it suddenly became intolerable. She shrieked in protest. She must do something about it and there was nothing she could do but scream, and this she did with everything she could put into it.
The taxi-driver was concerned. It was not possible to drive a screaming girl, in hysterics, through the early-morning streets. He drove to a drinking fountain he knew of and Hadji filled his cap with water and threw it in Jenny’s face while Madame slapped her cheeks. Almost immediately a small crowd began to collect. As they drove off the screams became loud, abandoned sobbing.
‘We must take her home by the first ferry,’ Madame said anxiously, the noise was unnerving. ‘There is only one thing left for me to do!’ And, though Hadji protested violently, she put on her glasses and brought a pocket syringe-container out of her handbag and with shaking fingers hurriedly put the syringe together. She fumbled at Jenny’s sleeve, pulling it up and rubbing spirit on the skin of the forearm, then, as they wobbled and bumped through the streets of old Stamboul, she filled the syringe with a solution from a small white tablet, looking at it carefully at eye-level for bubbles of air, and with a practised ease plunged the needle through the thin skin of the young forearm.
And that was what Jenny told Nuri bey.
CHAPTER 7
Though it might seem that Madame Miasma had nothing much to do, her days were, in fact, filled almost completely by three main occupations, that of la toilette, which took up most of the morning, talking on the telephone, and twittering to her birds. No major washing of the body being done in Turkish houses, she went on Thursday and often twice a week to one of the big hamams in Istanbul, which excursion took up the major part of a whole day. There would be visits to the mosque and a certain amount of time spent in her garden where she would keep a severe eye on Hadji, never an enthusiastic gardener.
This morning Miasma had a great deal to occupy her mind as she fulfilled automatically the actions which had become her habit over the years. She had no breakfast because there was no Valance to bring it to her and as she had not entered her kitchen for years, it did not occur to her to go and get her meal for herself. Hadji prayed and after he had prayed he went into the garden where he was doing a more than usually complicated operation with the bas
alt rockery, beside the steps.
Though Miasma’s mind retained the sharpness of a razor which can cut a hair in mid air, the last forty-eight hours had tried it almost to its full capacity and now she was worried that there was something, some small detail which she might have missed and which could, forgotten, bring the whole complicated and expensive edifice that she had built up, crashing down to destroy her.
She had missed three nights’ sleep, she had eaten frugally and now it was essential that she eat something more substantial. As she went through the bird-room on the way into the garden, she could not resist stopping to greet some of her favourites. Turks treat their birds with the respect that Westerners do their animals. In a country where the cats are never fed and are left to stagger about the streets dying on their paws, the sellers of food for the pigeons take their place outside the mosques with their small bags of corn, hopefully, at six o’clock in the morning.
She was considerably downcast by the condition of the cages, which had not been cleaned since Valance died two days ago. Hadji must clean them out; he must also repair the rockery and get her some food. He must attend to the motor car, swab the marble floor of the house throughout and do the shopping. Hadji was an old man, almost as old as Madame herself; what if things became too much for him?
A lifetime of activity, of scheming, planning, devising, deciding, organizing and conspiring, had become a habit deeply ingrained; there was no rest for her who, had she been an Englishwoman, would have been nodding in the ingle of some expensive home for old ladies.
She stumped out on to the marble pavement at the top of the steps beside which Hadji was toiling like the calamity-prone under-privileged character he was. Basalt is rock that was once lava and flowed beneath the sea; the large piece that Hadji was carrying was a bright brown with a faint sparkle from tiny crystals embedded in its surface. Within a few feet of the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, facing north-west, would seem a poor place for a rockery. This particular rockery, however, was distinctly similar to those seen in the tiny villa gardens, sunless and sour, of industrial Lancashire; no flowers grew in it but ferns which uncurled obscenely, and leaves both gloomy and sickly, like those of London Pride and Periwinkle, pathetic plants, doomed to grow in soot and sulphur. For some moments she stood watching him in silence, her hands tucked into her wide sleeves.
