by Joan Fleming
Who would suffer the more if nothing were done? It was hard to say. Madame Bassompierre would undoubtedly raise hell; but then, so would Madame Miasma. And furthermore, either the Prophet or the God of the Christians was going to be seriously annoyed. It could not, Nuri bey said warmly, be pleasing to the Prophet that the Christian should lie in the Moslem burial ground in the grave where, later, Miasma herself would lie. Would it not be for the best to please Allah and the Prophet by putting right this terrible mistake and at the same time appease the God of the Christians?
The ‘Ayes’ had it, especially when Nuri bey, at this crucial moment, brought forth part (though not all) of the bundle of notes which Madame Bassompierre had given him, and began thoughtfully to riffle through them.
One of the trogs appointed himself foreman and suggested that the present six of them should remove the coffin at once from Madame’s courtyard so that there would be no danger of her seeing it. No need to wait for a mule cart to be hired, they would go at once and lift the coffin across the road, thrust it through the rhododendron hedge, and carry it up to the top of the hill where they would guard it until after dark. One of them would then arrange for the mule cart after the exhumation to carry the coffin with the body in it back down the track to the waiting truck during the hours of darkness.
The foreman himself would take a bus to the next village and arrange for the truck to take the coffin across in the car ferry and to the airport soon after dawn. He would, furthermore, and if Nuri bey so required and would write it, deliver a note to Madame Miasma which would set her mind at rest with regard to the coffin, about the arrival of which Hadji had undoubtedly gone to report. It might well be that Madame Miasma was on her way back to the yali at the moment.
On the inside of an old envelope Nuri bey wrote to Miasma that, with regard to any news Hadji had brought Miasma, he wanted her to know that he had the situation in hand and that he would telephone her later in the day. The note was to be left at the yali when they went for the coffin.
He looked slowly from one to another, round the ring of inscrutable brown faces so close to his own.
‘Can anything go wrong?’ he asked, and answered the question himself. ‘It can go wrong if any of you talk about this to anyone outside the circle. Nobody must know … if the news leaks out, you will have half the village trailing up to the grave after you tonight; the imam himself will be told, and all will be lost; great disgrace will come upon you.’
He tapped his lips with pointed finger and thumb as he thought. ‘And it can go wrong if you do not take with you everything you will require: spades, a rope, an instrument for prising up the burial boards.’ Unblinking, the bright black eyes stared at him from under the peaks of five cloth caps and one elderly felt trilby.
‘And it can go wrong,’ Nuri bey went on slowly, ‘if any of you lose your nerve. Is there one amongst you who thinks that, when the time comes, he will not dare to assist in this terrible task? Remember, you are to raise a body whose soul may already be, as it were, in the arms of the Prophet, or maybe whose soul cries out for a Christian burial and still haunts the poor body. Do you dare?’ he asked the foreman who promptly answered that he did dare. ‘And you? And you?’ He went round the circle and got instant acceptance from all. Not once, as he spoke, did one of them drop his eyes to the money in Nuri bey’s hand but neither did any of them forget it for a split second!
‘And remember,’ Nuri bey went on, ‘you are committing no crime; as far as I know there is no law against it. As I understand it, it is an unusual deed but a good one because, if it is not done, a number of people will be very unhappy, and the doing of it will cause happiness and satisfaction. And who knows? it may bring good fortune to any of you, and it will certainly remove the possibility of bad fortune, to have that alien body removed from our midst. Here is your first stroke of good fortune,’ Nuri bey added unsmilingly, handing out what he considered rather more than a suitable amount of money to each of them, and an additional sum to the foreman who was to arrange for the mule cart and the truck.
They all stood up and bowed to the bey Efendi, touching their foreheads in the Arab greeting. It was on his lips to murmur, ‘Allah be with you,’ he also thought of ‘God speed’ but decided, for safety, upon a secular valediction: ‘Good luck,’ he said in English and hurried out.
It was no time for smiling; Madame Bassompierre repressed her look of approval into a crooked pursing of her lips which gave her face a semi-humorous expression. The steamer which Nuri bey knew was due, now appeared round the point, coming down the Bosphorus on its way to town. By taking it here and now, they would avoid having to return to the yali at an uncomfortable moment.
Nuri bey’s heart sank; it was quite evident that he could not merely pack Madame Bassompierre into the ferry boat and say goodbye to her; he would have to go back to the city and help her to arrange for the transport of the coffin and further, as she could not return to the yali, he would have to stay beside her until he got her safely off into the sky. As she was the great-aunt of Tony Grand, he could not afford to let her out of his sight for long. It seemed to him that the question of Tony Grand had been dropped from their conversation altogether too easily. His helpfulness on her behalf ought to engender a similar helpfulness on her part.
She had put on her hat and adjusted the veil and now she sat placidly beside him, black-gloved hands folded calmly in her lap, and enjoyed the cool breeze as they steamed down towards Istanbul.
‘You have been very kind, Monsieur Nuri bey. I don’t know what I should have done without your magnificent help.’
Nuri bey waved the thanks aside, murmuring that he could have done nothing without assistance from others. He very much hoped that they would not be discovered; humble people were often suspected of malpractice when revealed in unusual actions; though, in fact, their motives were innocent, the authorities would never believe that they were harmless but would suspect them of removing the body to sell it to a hospital, a practice that was often done years ago.
‘I promise you, dear Monsieur, that I will never repeat to any living soul what has taken place between us this morning. I will take a solemn Christian oath on it,’ and so saying she signed herself with the Cross.
He acknowledged this with equal solemnity, adding: ‘But if I had thought there was the slightest likelihood of discovery, I would never have employed them. I assure you, Madame, that a Moslem cemetery is the most empty place in the world; I can think of no contingency at all which would lead to their discovery. And I assure you they won’t talk about it!’
There was a considerable wait at the airline office but, on the whole, the matter was put through without any difficulty. The officials concerned maintained a nice degree of sympathy with the bereaved Frenchwoman, showing a personal understanding. There was a certain womanly dignity about her of which the Turks strongly approved, and, furthermore, her readiness to pay for everything without any argument about prices eased the way. It was arranged that the coffin leave the airport by the next freight plane, which would be on the following day, arriving the same day in Paris.
After that, luncheon was necessary and he took her to a small restaurant off Eminonu where Madame ate her meal with gusto. They went for a quick tour of the Hippodrome, the Cistern, Aya Sofia and, to the old Harem where they wandered about in the shade. Any normal woman, he thought, would plead exhaustion and beg to be taken back to her hotel for a rest; but the Frenchwoman appeared to have an iron constitution and boundless energy. He would stick closer than a brother, he thought; sooner or later she would have to mention the urgent question of her great-nephew.
But when they had sat in a café and sipped tea until it was time to go to the hotel to collect her overnight case and on to the airport bus terminus, she had still not said anything further, Nuri bey knew he would have to bring up the subject again.
Tentatively, he took it up where they had left off. Now that the question of her sister’s body had been satisfactorily arra
nged, he began, would it not be as well for Madame to consider the question of her great-nephew, wanted by the police of two countries? He went on to say that after all that had happened between them today, Madame could surely feel that he was to be trusted?
Indeed, Madame said emphatically, she trusted Nuri bey perfectly and completely.
Well, then?
Madame Bassompierre turned her chair and looked at him long and steadily, saying nothing.
If, Nuri bey went on, Tony Grand was to be left well off, as she had said, by his grandmother Valance, it would, surely, be of importance to the family to know where he was hiding. Or whether, in fact, anything serious had happened to him.
‘Monsieur,’ she answered grandly, ‘I—and I speak for my family, do not wish to be associated with this matter in any way. We have a certain position in our own country: a friend of my son-in-law, as I told you, is a customs officer. It is absolutely impossible for us to associate ourselves with this matter.’
‘Then you don’t care’ (in simple French: that is to you equal) ‘that your great-nephew is perhaps already dead?’ It was crudely put but there was no time for niceness. ‘I must remind you,’ Nuri bey went on, ‘his death, if he is dead, will have to be proved before anything can be done with the money left him by his grandmother.’
It was a good point and Madame Bassompierre saw it instantly. ‘ Voyons,’ she said at last, ‘Monsieur Nuri bey, it is important that you understand how we look at this …’
‘It is indeed!’
‘Last time Valance was home, she told us the whole unhappy circumstance and wept many, many tears before she left us. In the course of time Tony Grand would often come to Istanbul to see his grandmother. He knows that she intended to leave him her considerable savings; besides, I think that he is truly fond of her in his way. When he visited her he also met Madame Miasma, and it is there that lies the whole cause of the trouble.’
‘How?’
‘How?’ Madame Bassompierre turned her thoughts over carefully before answering. ‘I make no accusations, Monsieur.’ There was a finality about the way she said it which kept Nuri bey quiet but she added, as an afterthought: ‘Whatever the exact situation may have been, it made Valance extremely unhappy. She could not mention it in her recent letters, of course, but it is my private opinion that what was worrying her when she was home last summer finally killed her. The English have an expression to “worry one’s self to death” and I am sure that is what my poor sister did.’
‘Then you have really no idea where your great-nephew could be?’
‘If I had, I should tell nobody. But I have not and I do not wish to know. I want nothing whatever to do with it, and my sister wanted nothing whatever to do with it, either, poor soul. If the boy is dead, it will be no surprise to me. The money due to him from Valance will be divided between the great-nephews and nieces, amongst whom are my own grown-up children. I know you think I sound hard, Monsieur, but Tony Grand is, yes, I shall have to admit it, even though the boy is my own flesh and blood, a scoundrel: I am only thankful he does not bear our family name!’
Nuri bey could see no point in mentioning female followers of the family scapegoat; to do so would be to complicate the situation even further.
‘You should leave the matter alone,’ Madame Bassompierre advised kindly, ‘you don’t want to get mixed up in it. As you must know, Monsieur, it is not ordinary smuggling which is in question.’ She tapped her fingers nervously on the table and looked extremely pained. ‘Pardon me, Monsieur, but the thoughts I have cause me such anger and pain I cannot keep quiet. Imagine … please use imagination … pay attention … every ounce of drug which is smuggled is used … for what? For what?’ she demanded angrily.
‘We do not use drugs here,’ he answered, trying not to sound smug. ‘We have other escapes to Nirvana!’
‘Nirvana! Every ounce, my friend, of smuggled drug goes into the blood stream of some poor wretch who is slowly destroying himself. To commit suicide is a crime … Monsieur … and yet slowly and surely to destroy the body and soul by the most disintegrating and degrading method known to man is not considered to be a crime.’
Nuri bey shivered, he simply could not help it.
‘So what do they do, the authorities? They prohibit the use except for a little for a few regular addicts; they restrict the sales. So the commerce of this devilish substance goes into the black market, naturally. Murderers are executed, are they not? But yes. And yet those who help to take drugs into a country are murderers of the worst kind: that is, those without imagination and common humanity!’ She gave a loud exclamation: ‘Pcha! Don’t mention Tony Grand to me, if you please!’
‘Vous avez raison, Madame,’ he murmured absently, lost in admiration for a mind which could strip a situation of all inessentials; nobody had ever talked like that to him in his life and he found it a stimulating experience; though he had known her only a few hours, Nuri bey felt he was going to miss Madame Bassompierre. He thought her a necessary person in the same way that Madame Miasma had thought Jenny unnecessary.
‘I must try to be more of a realist,’ he said out loud. But Madame Bassompierre did not hear; she was drumming her fingers on the table and humming a tune. ‘I trust,’ she said at last, ‘that nothing will go wrong with our plans. It is at least a beautiful evening, Monsieur; there will be no mud.’
‘Mud?’
‘In the grave. A beautiful fine, warm, dry evening. They will be able to raise the body of my poor sister as cleanly and easily as I can remove a truffle from the ground and transfer it to my basket when I am staying with my relatives in the Perigord.’
Nuri bey hoped it would be so.
‘Once her body lies at peace in Père Lachaise, there will no longer be any need to worry overmuch about her soul, though one will, of course, pray for it. She will rest in peace all right, my poor sister.’
Nuri bey again hoped it would be so.
At the bus station, with the moment of departure impending, they were like two old friends, depressed by the imminent separation, making the conventional last-minute remarks on the ‘mind-you-write’ and ‘give my love to Aunty’ lines. Nuri bey said how much he had enjoyed meeting her and she thanked him for all his kindness. He said that when she came again she must not fail to get in touch with him and she, in turn, invited him to her home in Paris whenever he could find time to come. They exchanged cards with their respective addresses. Nuri bey said he had plenty of time (refraining from mentioning it was money he lacked) and that perhaps it might happen that he would come. And Madame said that, though they lived near St Augustin, a bus passed their flat which could take him across Paris to the door of the mosque which was not as big as Aya Sofia but very nice. And Nuri bey said that would be very convenient. Madame thanked him again and Nuri bey waved the thanks aside airily and said any time … any time. They shook hands, clasped warmly and firmly for several seconds like two people in no hurry to leave each other, and then Madame briskly climbed into the bus and waved to Nuri bey through the window whilst he stood at attention until the bus moved off down the street.
And that was that. Exit Madame Bassompierre, who had flashed through his life like a meteor, leaving him slightly altered so that in the years to come Nuri bey would think of his life as ‘before Bassompierre’ or ‘after Bassompierre’; two distinct periods.
Nobody would have thought, to see him swing himself on to the crowded tram going up the steep main road of Pera, that he was going home to fetch the dagger which was kept on his hall table and used as a paper-knife.
CHAPTER 16
It had burned like a dry packing-case; when the first stage of fire passed into the second stage, there was no hope for the house at all. Three red and white fire engines arrived with a set of impressively large hoses which poured what appeared to be a vast quantity of water into the conflagration. But nothing less than the entire Bosphorus would have quenched that blaze. The look-out room was the last to go; tottering, intact, in t
he top corner of an incandescent edifice, it hung on until there was nothing left to hang on to, and then crashed down and gave the fire a final mouthful to consume.
Jenny sat hugging her wounded arm, her back against the wall of a nearby house, the carpet-bag safely beside her, and thought how much she would have been enjoying the sight under different circumstances.
The whole house fell together in a sickening black mess from which emerged charred wooden uprights like totem poles. And the firemen, with great enthusiasm and energy continued to pour hundreds of gallons of water into the black mass, subduing every tiny wisp of escaping smoke until nothing living remained of the fire but an extremely nauseating smell.
And back came Nuri bey, striding along the road with great purposeful strides, to find his house no longer existed. But he was surrounded by friends offering help, advice, sympathy, encouragement. He was told about Jenny’s heroism, her near escape from death and her grave injury. He was led to her and shown the wound and told how it had been dealt with. Offers of hospitality were showered upon him.
Whilst the firemen packed away their hoses and the helpers picked over the rubble and tried fruitlessly to find one whole intact object, Nuri bey walked up and down and round what had been his house. He showed neither rage nor sorrow; sometimes he stooped and picked up a fragment of carpet, a section of stained glass, the sodden corner of a ruined book, and threw it back into the morass. Finally, with extreme tact and sympathy, everybody left the stricken owner to his sorrow; everybody, that is, except Jenny, who went to him with the carpet-bag and took his arm.
‘It’s all because of me,’ she murmured, ‘I’m so terribly sorry. I’ve brought all this down on you and ruined your life.’
‘Yes, Jenny. It is so. But it had to happen. I see that now.’
‘How do you mean?’
