by Joan Fleming
Hadji placed the rock in an empty socket of earth, then took it out and replaced it at an angle which fitted the hole better.
‘That will do,’ Miasma said irritably, ‘at this time of the year the plants will soon grow over it.’
Hadji wiped his hands on his trousers. He wished his lady to know that Allah had been speaking with him.
Madame replied that he no doubt wished to tell her what Allah had had to say this time, though, in fact, she was not very interested. Hadji now burst out into a small lecture. Those, he said, who were dead were dead.
Madame agreed.
The dead were now gathered into Allah’s bosom. He said a number of deeply profound things about Kismet with certain quotations from the Koran and Madame waited patiently because she knew from experience that it was no good trying to get Hadji to edit and curtail his observations in any way.
Now Allah had seen fit to deliver this young girl into their hands but had distinctly warned Hadji in no uncertain terms that though they might keep her safe and well, they must not harm her in any way. Above all, and Allah had been very clear on this point, they must not lead her footsteps into the ways of evil. But the ways of evil, as Madame and her humble servant Hadji well knew, had been already entered. He stood quite still, immobilized by the importance of what he had to say, one finger raised as he might imagine Allah raised His finger, and denounced the small white pellets soluble in water deriving from the opium plant, invention of the Western devils, which did nothing but destroy.
Madame argued that this was nonsense. No greater benefit to mankind had been invented than the small white pellets, soluble in water, which derived from the opium plant. Allah’s infinite mercy lay in allowing men to evolve the white pellet, derivative of the opium plant, soluble in water, so that it might be injected under the skin of those who suffered beyond bearing, and smooth away their pain.
So, up to a point, Hadji agreed. When this small white pellet was given in hospital, under the protection of the doctor, it could bring infinite mercy. But in the hands of one who was not a doctor, plunged regardless into any arm on the spur of the moment, it brought only woe of the most fierce and fatal kind.
Valance and he had discussed this problem many a time and Hadji well knew how Valance had felt on the subject. They had never understood fully why Madame treasured her new syringe so much and upon whom she had intended to use it. And now that Valance was no longer with them, Hadji felt it to be his duty, in conjunction with Allah, to make the very strongest protest against the use of the syringe.
An invention of the devil, he said, and so long as Madame was needle-happy (though he did not use those exact words), no luck could come to them. He begged her in the name of Allah, coupled with the name of her old friend Valance, to throw it into the Bosphorus, ‘into which all evil things, in the course of time … go’.
For many years, probably daily, Hadji had stated that he was the humble servant of Miasma. It was not strictly true; the relationship of Miasma, Valance and Hadji was that of three incomplete people who found wholeness only in each other and together. Now that one of the trio was gone, both of those left assumed a greater importance to one another than ever before. Therefore, though she might state the contrary, Madame listened acutely to all that Hadji had to say, even though his words were extremely distasteful; he was the only person on earth who knew her as she was.
And now, because he was not succeeding in convincing her, Hadji went further and had even more painful things to say. As a girl of eighteen, he said, Madame had had nothing, Hadji and Madame well knew how much nothing she had had, there would be no need to recapitulate. And now Madame had everything, or everything anyone on this earth could want. How had that been attained? By the use of her wits and by the use of power. Allah did not wish that power should be in the hands of his people but there were times when it had to be in order that the human being should survive. Allah arranged as old age came on that the power they might wield would fade, and that was as it should be. Madame’s power had faded but, unwilling to accept the Will of Allah, she had taken this devilish device into her possession as an instrument of power. With it she might feel herself to be as Allah, All Powerful, and that was wicked and not to be.
With a last gesture of appeal, Hadji held out his hand: ‘Give me the syringe and the rest of the white pellets,’ he begged, ‘for the love of Allah, that I may throw it into the Bosphorus and bring to us both a lasting peace.’
But Madame only smiled grimly and said that Hadji was a superstitious cowardly eunuch; such wisdom as came from him, came from one who had never known the strength and the pleasure of being a man; born between nothing and an East Wind, he was of no account and what Allah had said to him was for his own use and not to be considered by those who were whole persons. Advice from Allah to Hadji was strictly personal. And furthermore, Hadji was not the only one to whom Allah gave advice. Miasma, too, came in for her share of the divine wisdom. She knew, without a doubt, Allah’s wishes with regard to the syringe and the white pellets and they were that she must retain both, and not throw them into the Bosphorus, because she might have an occasion to soothe the agony of mind of many an unhappy person. This young girl, for instance, was frantic with worry and tortured with doubt; it was a humane and gracious act that she should relieve her of her misfortunes for at least a short time.
And now, perhaps, Hadji would rustle out of it, get her something to eat, clean out the bird-cages, go out and buy some food and remove from her sight the fork and spade with which he had been disfiguring the rockery.
Alas, all would not be well, Hadji declared. Madame turned her back and went into the bird-room, but Hadji shouted that they would be punished, good fortune would recede, ill luck would take its place and all would be fled save gall.
CHAPTER 8
There had been no guest staying in the yali for many years. The guest rooms were barely furnished and now used as a repository for unwanted pieces of furniture. Overstuffed being the operative word regarding Turkish furnishings (it can in fact be used in reference to most things Turkish: women, taxis, rissoles wrapped in vine leaves and much else besides), the guest rooms were scattered with pieces of furniture from the bird-room, which had to be cleared to make room for the ever-increasing feathered population. Standing about the rooms in a state of unutterable gloom, were overstuffed navy-blue cubes, like the European pouffes so long now unfashionable, with a pattern of acid yellow and ox-blood red on the top; court cupboards apparently made entirely of black cotton reels, iron-grey prints of historic scenes with fretwork frames, a bonheur du jour made of mother-of-pearl which could have been elegant but suffered from thick ankles which would shame an ordinary kitchen table. Limp curtains of real Nottingham lace hung damply from the windows, looking out over the Bosphorus in the same way that similarly-curtained windows looked across the road at their prototypes in St Annes-on-Sea in the year nineteen hundred and ten.
Valance had always declared that the Bosphorus gave her the shivers (ça me donne les frisons); she had demanded and been granted the second-best room, adjoining Madame’s but overlooking the entrance yard and the main road. And over the years she had gradually Europeanized her room, bringing from her home in France things which she considered civilized and suitable; a chest of drawers of Spanish chestnut wood, a dressing-table to match, views of Montmartre and the Lake of Geneva, an Empire workbox on elegant brass feet, a round table covered with Valenciennes lace and a collection of photographs. But best of all was her splendid Provencal bed, four feet wide, the head and foot a shining scroll of conker-coloured amboyna, a feather mattress and a heavy lace bedspread lined with pink satin. She would refer to it in a voice of such adoration that anyone who did not know might think she was referring to some beloved called Mon Lit. Je vais à mon lit (I go to my bed) she would say when things became too much for her, and that would be that.
As there had been nowhere else to put Jenny when she arrived at an early hour in the morning, Had
ji had taken her upstairs to Valance’s room and she had fallen at once into a sound sleep on mon lit.
If Madame had not felt suddenly tired, she would herself have taken her guest to the room she was to occupy. She did not often go into Valance’s room and she cared so little about her guest’s comfort that she snapped at Hadji to take her to Valance’s room.
And Hadji, who had never set foot in Valance’s room, simply opened the door and indicated to Jenny that she was to go to sleep in there. Finding the sheets had not been changed since the last occupant left, Jenny had curled up under the bedspread, a thing which must have caused Valance to turn restlessly in her newly-occupied grave.
Jenny now opened her eyes after her eight hours’ sleep and wondered if indeed she were sucking a piece of sponge. Investigation proved it to be merely her tongue. She got up unsteadily, she felt dizzy, sick, and had a headache, almost as though she had a hang-over. She staggered to the looking-glass over Valance’s dressing-table and observed herself with horror. She looked ghastly. Then she felt so faint that she sat down hurriedly and put her head between her knees. It was no good, she realized, trying to kid herself that she had had a bad dream. It was much too real for a dream; she remembered every horrifying detail, including her own unusual behaviour and the way in which Madame had dealt with it. She remembered the feeling of exultation she had felt as they waited for the first ferry boat, with Madame and Hadji holding her on either side. She remembered the boat trip to Asia Minor with the small ferry-boat aiming wide of the quay and swinging round with the tremendous current. She remembered her hysterical laughter at the sight of the De Dion Bouton parked near the ferry port. ‘A motor car, not a mere car!’ she had giggled. She remembered Hadji, an absurd figure in his cloth cap, as chauffeur. If she had been drunk, she would have remembered very little and felt a great misery and shame but now she felt that she had had a marvellous experience; there had been some special heightened delight about it and Jenny was not so stupid as not to have an idea as to what it was.
She sat up briskly. She must get to hell out of it, as Tony would say. Furthermore, the trick of showing her that disgusting hanging hadn’t worked; she didn’t believe for one moment that an Englishman would be hanged in a foreign country for a crime committed against one of his own countrymen in that country. He would be—what was it called?—extradited. Anyway, the British Government would certainly never leave him to the untender mercies of these savages. Good heavens, it might cause a war in the Near East if that sort of thing could happen to Tony! Though still far from well, she began to feel better. She sat at Valance’s dressing-table, used her brush and comb and did her hair up into a French twist at the back. Like that she looked older and more intelligent. Her eyes were puffy and her lips lily-pale and swollen. Her skirt was still hanging where she remembered putting it, carefully over the high foot of mon lit with her white sweater folded on top. She pulled them on, brushing the skirt with Valance’s clothes-brush, then looked round the room for signs of washing facilities. There was a jug and basin but no water in which she could swill her face. She moved across to the lace-covered round table upon which stood Valance’s photographs. There, amongst the stiff-looking men holding themselves erect with one hand on the back of a chair to prop themselves up, smugly smiling matrons with fronts like pouter pigeons against backgrounds of palms in flowered-pots … was Tony, a slightly younger Tony with his twisted smile, wearing a dark blazer with brass buttons. The shock was so severe that her legs began to tremble.
She picked up the photograph and moved across to the window to allow such light as penetrated the greening trees to show it up better. There was no doubt at all that it was Tony. It was in an elaborate frame of twisted metal, a frame which had obviously contained another photograph. She opened it and found that at the back of Tony’s photograph was another of a wedding group, taken years ago—a stout, dark-haired young man in soldier’s uniform with a small, dark girl simpering from his arm. Tony’s parents? Grandparents? Or nothing to do with Tony?
She went across to the door and opened it slowly, trying to make no sound. She stood listening. Above the bird-twittering she heard the distant sound of voices, those of Madame Miasma and the servant, talking in their mumbling Turkish. Quickly she flitted across the landing and opened the first door she saw, looking inside and observing the sullen discarded furniture, smelling the unused smell. She peered into three similar rooms and then, across the landing, into Madame’s room. She crept across to the windows, one of which stood wide open on to the balcony which hung out over the Bosphorus. Below she heard their voices and peeping down she saw Hadji standing beside some gardening work he was doing, holding a fork and pointing a finger towards the sky with his other hand. He appeared to be giving Madame some kind of lecture.
The room was pungent and stuffy and reeking of her special scent. The enormous Victorian dressing-table with the lace doilies, was untidy and covered with a film of expensive powder. There was a beautiful mother-of-pearl brush set, inlaid with gilt or gold, initialled M. But there were no photographs, of Tony or anyone else.
She reasoned thus: one thing was now clear; instead of running back to Nuri bey, who would be bewildered by the way she had disappeared, so ungracious was it, she must at least stay here until she knew what was happening to Tony. If it was now obvious that he did not care what happened to her, she owed it to herself to show that she cared, or had cared, about him, and she was not going to brush him off like a tiresome fly now that he was in trouble. Tony had deceived her utterly, posing as something he was not but until she had had a sincere talk and charged him with the deception, she must remain loyal.
He had never talked much about his family or early life, murmuring casually that his father was killed in the war and his mother married to an American and living in the U.S.A., and that he had always had to ‘fend for himself’, and that was all she knew.
Her head was aching severely with the necessity of making the decision, should she charge Madame with knowing a lot more about Tony than she would admit or should she put the photograph face-downwards in a drawer and say nothing about it? She had a strange feeling of excitement now because she felt sure Tony was near, probably in the house. She still thought he was hiding and it was possible that Hadji and Madame had brought her here to be near Tony and to smuggle them both out of the country quickly.
Whether she would go with Tony or not would have to be decided; what, at the moment, she would prefer to do would be to stay and explore Istanbul in the fascinating company of Nuri bey.
Leaving the decision to circumstance, she went downstairs into the marble-flagged hall and into the bird-room. Madame came in through the french window to meet her, inquiring, like a gracious hostess, whether she had slept well and Jenny answering like the perfect guest, that she had slept well. Whose room had she occupied? she asked. The room of Valance, Madame’s French companion, who, she would remember, had died suddenly two days ago from a stroke.
‘Two days ago! Everything seems to be happening at once, doesn’t it?’ Jenny exclaimed in a voice that rang out like a bell.
Madame apologized that her domestic arrangements were not running smoothly as the result of Valance’s death. The shopping, for instance, was not done and there was little to eat in the house. However, presently Hadji would bring something; in the meantime perhaps Mademoiselle would like to look at her pretty birds.
‘Let’s not fool around,’ Jenny suggested. ‘You brought me here for a reason and that reason has something to do with Tony Grand. You’re scared of something and you want me under your eye. Is that it, Madame? And you know that silly trick of softening me up by showing me that beastly hanging early this morning hasn’t helped one bit. It’s just made me pretty disgusted with your barbaric country and given me a beast of a headache. I don’t suppose your servant told Nuri bey what we were up to when he rang him, if he rang him, did he? I thought not. It was a beastly trick; a sort of vile inhuman trick no normal person could think up
. I don’t know what Nuri bey will say when he knows, but he’ll be pretty disgusted, I do know that!’
‘Ecoute, mon enfant,’ Madame said firmly, ‘I have nothing against you, you have been used like one of the small men in a game of chess. The game is much more important than you but the fact that you exist will make the game go one way,’ she gesticulated with her hands, ‘or the other. And until I know which way you must remain here with me.’
‘You’d keep me a prisoner? That is virtually abduction and I am sure it’s a crime here as well as at home. You can’t do it!’
‘You are in a very weak position, my child. As I understand it, there is nobody who knows where you are. You have left your home and your family and have travelled far on your own. There is no one anywhere who will miss you. Nobody knows when you come in, when you go out, if you are well fed or if you are starved, what you are wearing or what you are not wearing, if you have money or no money …’
‘I’ve still got my passport … I’m still a British subject! The consul …’
‘… or even that you are here. You have told me yourself that you have shaken off your family; it may be months, or even years, before they realize that you have disappeared.’
‘No—no—it’s not like that!’
‘Not a soul to care where you are or how you are. L’enfant de personne!’
Nobody’s baby.
‘Tony …’ but as she said it, Jenny’s spirits fell even lower. How much did Tony care?
‘Nobody anywhere knows where you are at this moment. Nobody …’
