When I Grow Rich

by Joan Fleming

  Now she had hobbled in, tossed down the money and passed the superintendent without a word of explanation as to why Valance was not with her; followed by a young girl carrying the gear, she had stumped to her usual place on the marble benches as though the place belonged to her.

  All the hamam woman required was a chance to get her own back and this she had shortly before midday when a yellow-faced, over-excited, highly nervous creature who, though barely in the form of a man, seemed to be more a man than anything else, sidled in through the entrance and demanded to see Madame Miasma upon the instant. The hamam woman put her hands on her hips and laughed loud and long and without being in the least amused. A stream of language poured from her scornful lips and strong brown throat, the outcome being that, if Mohammed himself had requested to have Madame Miasma brought out from her bath, she would not allow it. When her ladies were in the hamam, they were inaccessible and out of touch with the world; if urgent messages were to be delivered to her clients when they were bathing, the whole purpose and sanctity of the hamam would be lost.

  Standing directly in front of Hadji with arms and legs akimbo, she tore him, virtually, to shreds and he stared fascinated at the space between her splendid legs as though wondering if he should dive between them and make a run for it, and this he might well have done had it not been for the unnerving idea of surprising Madame Miasma actually in the process of bathing.

  In vain Hadji tried to explain that something of very great importance had occurred and that Madame Miasma herself would be extremely angry if the news were not imparted to her immediately.

  But on the contrary, the hamam woman argued, Madame Miasma would be disturbed and agitated to such an extent that her health might well be endangered if she were called suddenly from the hot room. An old lady in such circumstances might have heart failure and she was not going to be responsible. Not if the sun had fallen out of the sky would she permit the news to be taken in to Madame Miasma; a number of equally picturesque similes followed, of mixed application that might be translated: wild horses on their bended knees would not persuade her. Her great luminous eyes bulged to bursting point and Hadji stared fascinated like a cringing but still wily stoat.

  A short silence throbbed between them before she became suddenly practical and suggested that, if Hadji wrote a note, she would see that Madame Miasma received it at a convenient moment. And there she had him. How could Hadji tell her that Madame Miasma, though gifted beyond ordinary women, could neither read nor write and that Valance and Hadji together had stood between this disability and the people who knew her and occasionally corresponded with her, for many years?

  For the moment he was defeated and looked it and the hamam woman at once gathered what she had been certain of all along, the news could wait. With something that stopped just short of being a particularly well-directed spit, she turned on her way back to the cool room, telling him the Turkish equivalent of: go and get lost.

  He went a few steps along the street and sat down at the entrance to an alley on the opposite side, from which he could keep watch on the hamam door.

  He thought about fire because fire is never very far from the minds of the citizens of Istanbul whose city has many times been ablaze and once burned ‘from sea to sea’. And as he sat with his arms wrapped round his knees, his thoughts lingered on fire and upon murder in a sad nostalgic vein. Murder was not what it had been in his youth. In those halcyon days, murder was quick and neat and clean; those whose presence was a nuisance would be disposed of and that was that. But in this so-called time of emancipation, murder was a much more complicated affair, it would seem. Whereas in the old days that a murder was expedient was all that was required, today there was a ridiculous sanctity about human life and, however advantageous the murder might be, authority was against it and so it was necessary to murder again and again and even again, in order to avoid being strung up at dawn on the football ground before the Sultan Ahmed Mosque.

  Which all proved, Hadji was sure, how ridiculous it was to attempt to make one’s countrymen happier and more contented by the modern methods introduced by Mustapha Kemal, whose memory Hadji, for one, execrated with all his shrivelled little soul.

  Madame Bassompierre would have to take the same road to Paradise as her sister Valance; it was sad and made Hadji feel melancholy because he had nothing against the two Frenchwomen. Nothing at all, it was only, as he might have phrased it, that they stuck out their necks.

  And though Nuri bey did not stick out his neck, he would die rather than admit that he was in possession of the case, which was valuable and, in addition, deadly evidence. Rocking himself to and fro and looking immeasurably sad, Hadji felt charitable enough to hope that, when his house was set on fire, Nuri bey himself would not perish in the flames.

  CHAPTER 14

  One of the many delights of the hamam was that there was no hurry. After the morning session and refreshment which included delicious water ices, and a long period of attention to the toilette, the whole process was repeated. As evening approached, the thought of facing the hard cold world again, clothed and in one’s right mind, was repellent; by then Jenny did not care if she stayed in the hamam for the rest of her life.

  All afternoon the hamam woman kept a keen watch on the entrance, never leaving her position in the cool room to do her rounds of the hot chambers, but watching the entrance door as a cat watches a mouse-hole. Though it would have been possible for Hadji to peer round the door and create a disturbance at a time when Miasma and Jenny were in the cool room, had he attempted it the consequences would have been calamitous. He was obliged to wait outside, in an agony of impatience, for many hours.

  When, finally, they came out, the dirt and dust and grey drabness of the old imperial city was transmuted; the sun had gone down and the sky, a deep, dark blue, wore one brilliant star in the east, and the massed buildings, down to the Golden Horn and up on the other side, round the Galata Tower, so uninspiring in full daylight, seemed now to be assembled in all their old glory.

  Hadji was crouching, half-asleep, in the doorway opposite; the satellite which had, for once, acted on its own, was utterly spent and could do no more until remotivated.

  Miasma waited on the edge of the pavement for a taxi and Jenny, carrying all the hamam luggage, was in a kind of dream. The happenings of the next few hours, however, though they had the same quality of unreality as a dream, differed in that her limbs were not weighed heavily, or her mind bogged down, as so often happens in dreams. The hamam had cleaned away all traces of drugs and she felt clear-headed and new as morning.

  Hadji was soon reporting his news to Miasma in such an excited manner and fantastic torrent of language that it would seem impossible for anyone, even a fellow-countrywoman, to understand what he was saying. But clearly she got the gist of it because she uttered a loud exclamation and staggered back as though about to fall and Hadji steadied her only to continue his revelations.

  ‘What is it? What has happened?’ Jenny put in now and then but neither took any notice at all and tears came to her eyes with the frustration of not being able to understand. Miasma’s exclamations soon tipped over into the hysterical, her voice rose to a shriek as both she and Hadji shouted together, neither listening to what the other said. Jenny heard the repeated word ‘yok’ which seemed to be operating as frequently as a comma. And then it would appear that Miasma was blaming him for not telling her sooner and Hadji was making cowering excuses, gesticulating towards the hamam entrance and giving a poor reproduction of the hamam woman’s implacability.

  But in spite of the clamour, some decision was quickly arrived at. Miasma hailed a shabby car with the black and white checkered line round the middle which showed it to be a taxi and the pirate-like driver pushed his bristly face out of the window, apparently telling them, with hoarse cries, to hurry up and get in. Traffic halted behind, started to hoot and for a moment Jenny thought she was going to be abandoned on the pavement. Hadji snatched the hamam impediment f
rom her and Miasma, having got into the taxi, now remembered her and leaned out.

  ‘And you,’ she spluttered, ‘you are not necessary, my child, you have never been necessary. You—you …’ French words failed her. ‘You are a silly girl to imagine that Tony Grand would bother about a stupid child like you. He only wanted to use you and now he has finished with you. Don’t leave yourself lying about any longer …’ Her French became almost incomprehensible but the gist of what she was saying was: ‘Get the hell out of here.’

  She was about to slam the taxi door when she had another thought: ‘Go to the British Consul. Pretend you are half-witted, that should not be difficult! Say you have lost your memory; they will have to send you back home; go back to your mother, whom you should never have left!’ With these few kind words the taxi door was slammed and they drove off as the traffic held up behind reached a frenzy of hysterical hooting.

  Jenny took stock of herself. In the matter of her dress and immediate possessions she was intact; she was wearing her white raincoat, carrying her large handbag with all its contents, including her passport, and thrust into her pocket were her silk headscarf and her crushed cotton gloves. She had bought tooth-brush and paste and several small items of food, and she still had a small amount of the money she had changed into Turkish lire; there was no need for panic action.

  Nuri bey had promised he would return to the yali, but he probably went earlier in the day. Since Miasma and she had left that morning, something of tremendous moment had happened; she felt sure the police had somehow traced Tony to the yali and had been making inquiries there; hence Hadji’s panic. She was clearly no longer wanted there and it might be stupid pig-headedness to go back to that dismal Swiss chalet perched on the very edge of the sullen black water, at this moment, and it was something she preferred not to do.

  Remembering Nuri bey telling her of his friend in the British Council with whom, on the evening he had been sent to the airport, he had arranged to have coffee, she decided to go there and ask for Nuri bey’s address. Walking thoughtfully down the hill towards Galata Bridge she could see the newer city of Pera across the Golden Horn; somewhere up beyond the tower in the endless blocks of houses and criss-cross of streets at the top of the hill, Nuri bey’s house lay but, even if she could find it after considerable search in daylight, she would never be able to find it at night.

  Unsuccessfully she asked a number of people the way to the British Council and in the end she took a taxi. The offices were shut but an Englishman was standing around who, though not the friend of whom Nuri bey had spoken, knew of Nuri bey and looked up his address in a telephone book. He went further, going out into the street for another taxi, seeing Jenny into it and giving the driver the address: it was as easy as that.

  As the taxi turned into the street where Nuri bey lived, she saw at once that a great cloud of smoke and flame was pouring up into the dark blue sky from behind the house. She saw the wooden house with the strange look-out room silhouetted against the conflagration, one window oddly red, like a sore eye. The driver brought his vehicle to a standstill with a number of deprecatory shouts and, bounding out, joined the handful of sightseers, staring apathetically.

  Having spent some time regretting what she called her ‘tame’ behaviour in the incident of the shooting at the airport, Jenny rose to this occasion. She tossed her white mackintosh over the front railings and, to the admiration of the crowd, dashed up the front steps, tried the front door to find it locked, and flung herself against it. She had seen cowboys do this in Western films and always the wooden panels of the doors against which they hurled themselves gave way. This time … not. She tore round the back and beside the back door she could see that a fire had been built against the wooden wall, the squarish sheet of metal which had been used for a dustbin lid had been propped against a support of the wooden wall, waste paper and household wood from the woodshed had been thrust underneath. Over the prepared heap had evidently been poured the fuel oil used for cooking, an empty tin lay on the ground nearby, dribbling the strong-smelling remains. Half the back of the house, right up to the roof, was burning briskly. Jenny laughed excitedly as she had done at the big bonfires they had had on Guy Fawkes day when she was a child.

  A few brisk swipes with a stone broke enough of a panel of the kitchen door for her to put her hand in and undo the bolt. The kitchen was not yet alight but the sudden draught caused part of the stained-glass window in the hall to break and flames and clouds of black smoke poured hungrily in. She tied her scarf over the lower part of her face and ran through the hall, wrenching the Shirvan carpet aside and snatching up Nuri bey’s precious carpet-bag. The black smoke rushed at her like an army with banners. She pulled at the green satin table cover and crammed it into the carpet-bag.

  It was smoke that killed, rather than flames; smoke would kill before the flames arrived. She knew there was no return through the kitchen now. Nor could she open the front door. Her eyes were streaming, she pulled the silk scarf up over her face and groped her way into the study. Here the smoke only wandered aimlessly and she could slip the scarf down again and pick up a chair; with all her strength, she thrust it against the window, which went with a splendid crash. Rolling the carpet-bag ahead of her, she stood on the chair and tried to climb out. Willing hands from below stretched up to help her but she had to go carefully to avoid the jagged edges of glass. Now the smoke seemed to have got the hang of it and, in a purposeful billow, caught up with her, sending out long arms to catch her, impaled upon the broken glass. She shrieked as her sweater caught and she felt the sharp edge of glass running down her forearm. Then somehow, by two men standing upon the bent backs of two others, she was lifted clear and fell to the ground crying like a child at the sight of the blood pouring down her hand. It didn’t hurt but there was so much blood that she felt it must.

  The window yawned smoke with the boredom of having lost its prey. Kind hands lifted her to safety, dozens of anxious faces peered into her own. A woman was fetched who evidently knew where to apply a tourniquet and a piece of material was produced which the woman wrapped tightly round her upper arm in a position which was evidently correct; the pulsating fountain of blood stopped almost immediately.

  No one attempted to bring water for the fire but water in gallons, brought in any number of curiously shaped receptacles from earthenware pitchers to plastic washing-up bowls, was poured liberally all over her in an almost continual stream. Gentle hands were laid on her forehead, water was put to her lips, kind, if incomprehensible, words were spoken, she was propped up, petted, pampered and fussed over. Are these a sample of the people, she wondered dreamily, who turned out in their hundreds to watch the public hanging yesterday morning?

  CHAPTER 15

  Whilst Madame Bassompierre fanned herself with her passport in the cool shade of the waterside terrace café and watched the wavelets breaking lightly against the water-steps, Nuri bey carried out the business in hand in a hovel a few yards behind the square. It was a squat building, whitewashed, with two small and one larger apertures which, if they had been glazed and boarded, would have been windows and a door. As it was, sacks hung over the windows so that no light should penetrate the darkness within. It was an eminently suitable place for his purposes.

  Arab-like, Nuri bey took up the position instinctively comfortable, cross-legged upon the hard clay floor, whilst six troglodytes of calamity and misfortune, sat in like manner, in a semi-circle round him, clasping their clean bare feet (clean because that was a part of their persons which many of them washed five times in twenty-four hours) and rocking themselves gently to and fro, as though keeping time to some astral music unheard by anyone but themselves. The consonant-less talk ran between them as easily and fluidly as a marble swung round an empty wooden bowl.

  He began by praising them for their prescience in regretting the burial which took place from Miasma’s house; an unfortunate mistake, he explained. Madame’s companion had never mentioned her wishes with regard t
o her disposal in the event of her death, to Madame Miasma, as was natural; nobody likes to dwell unnecessarily upon that time. The poor woman having died suddenly, Madame Miasma had been anxious only to do her duty as a good Moslem and get her old friend and companion buried as soon as possible. Valance’s body had had the treatment, as Madame had said, as she herself would wish her own body to be dealt with after death.

  But her family in France, as was meet and right, had been repeatedly told by their dear sister that she wished only for a Christian burial and for her body to lie in her native soil.

  In a short, rousing speech Nuri bey declaimed upon the impropriety of burying an infidel under the flag of Islam, the religion of warriors.

  What to do? It was quite clear that neither Madame Miasma nor the imam would allow the removal of the body; such a thing was without precedent and the bare mention of it would cause the greatest distress to those two who had arranged the burial, and who believed, as they all believed, that once in the grave the dead body should be allowed to remain there until the end of time.

  But the family of Valance, as represented by the poor French lady who now sat in the café, waiting the result of their conference, were expecting her body back in France tomorrow for the funeral which had already been arranged and the laying of the coffin by the side of her forefathers, as was seemly in the Christian Church.