by Joan Fleming
‘Our culture here,’ Nuri bey proclaimed, ‘is limited; our interests are narrow; our outlook restricted. It would be foolish of me to sell my best … locally.’ And the last word fell with dismal effect upon the straining hairy ears.
The Toad said that the prices that would be offered … locally … might well be equal to anything that might be offered abroad. And Nuri bey asked how that could be. When abroad, he would go from expert to expert, taking their advice; he need be in no hurry to sell; he would get in touch with the people who interested themselves exclusively in any one particular book that he wished to sell at the time. Clearly this way he would get the best possible prices.
‘Efendim!’ the bookseller said reproachfully, ‘I have always strived to sell you my best at my lowest price. I have kept aside for you anything which I thought would be of interest to you.’
‘My friend, you have always served me excellently well, and I thank you. However, over the matter of the things which I inherited, they are of such importance that I hesitate to burden you with them. Who knows, I may come back from the Western World with my valuables intact? They may be found to be not so valuable as we have thought.’
That was ridiculous. Everybody knew Nuri bey possessed a very remarkable, if tiny, collection of books: they had been inspected more than once by those interested, in the city, and by visiting experts.
‘I know where I could get a very good price for your illuminated manuscript of the synoptic gospels,’ the Toad croaked.
‘Thank you. But before selling I would like to satisfy myself as to the highest price I could get.’
There was a heavy silence but not complete deadlock. The door was evidently not yet slammed in their faces. Thoughtfully the bookseller flipped through the pages of the illuminated psalter. ‘You have never sold me anything,’ he murmured mournfully, ‘you have never tried me for price. I may be able to offer you just as good prices as your foreign experts.’
Nuri bey looked interested but doubtful. He, too, fingered the psalter, leaving it open at the most showy of the exquisite paintings.
‘Consider,’ the Toad rumbled, ‘consider carefully, bey Efendi, that what you will do is for the best.’
‘If,’ Nuri bey said carefully, ‘if you are, indeed, in touch with world markets and can offer realistic prices … but until I have studied the situation for myself, how am I to know? I confess to being an amateur on the subject of the value of my possessions.’
‘Apart from your synoptic Bible there are, if I remember rightly, five items of great importance …’ the Toad enumerated them on his stubby fingers, the beads dangling from his thumb as he did so, ‘… worth anything from, let me see …’ The amount of lire, when he heard it, gave Nuri bey a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach; all five and the synoptic Bible lay, an unrecognizable black mush in the place where his house had been; as disgusting as camel-dung and not as useful.
‘I hope to get a good deal more than that,’ he stated calmly. He watched in vain for signs of frenzy in the slow throbbing in the Toad’s neck.
‘However—’ he paused, however being a release word from tension.
‘In the meantime I need many hundreds of lire for my immediate plans.’ He took out his passport and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘I shall travel by Comet,’ he boasted, ‘and that costs much money, I am told …’ He wandered off on the subject of travel to give time to the bookseller and the Toad to examine all he had brought to sell, which he now took out of his carpet-bag and laid on the counter beside the psalter. They fingered through his few possessions in the sneering, deprecatory way used by dealers about to buy. One of the Korans he had bought from that same shop many years ago, but now the bookseller pretended he had never seen it before and examined it thoroughly, stopping just short of smelling it.
In the end the price they offered was three times in excess of what Nuri bey had hoped for in his most optimistic moment. He took a tremendous risk, making a small smile that was more of a grimace and slowly, slowly, put the things back into the carpet-bag. ‘These, too, I should perhaps reserve for the world market,’ he murmured. It was a dizzy, sickening moment: it was so certain that the Toad would stir restlessly in his chair, as though anxious to see the last of him, and the bookseller would sigh, as though he really minded whether Nuri bey took it or left it, and all would be over.
‘If, of course, we could have any assurance that the Efendi would give us the opportunity of marketing his other possessions, no doubt the price could be raised.’
It was a matter of principle. Nuri bey was no George Washington, who could not tell a lie, but the truth was important to him. After a long struggle with himself, interminably long, the words jerked themselves out, half-truths because the meaning behind them was untruth. ‘I cannot give you that assurance.’
If they had asked directly ‘why not?’ he would have answered truthfully, but mercifully they didn’t. The shopkeeper said in an offended way that only last week a titled English gentleman and his wife had been in; they had left a card and here it was! the bey Efendi must read it; the curator of a museum in Cambridge, England, no less! How, then, could Nuri bey possibly imply that he, the shopkeeper, was not in touch with world markets?
‘Did he buy?’ Nuri bey asked, and the shopkeeper had had to reply that no, he had not bought because he had not, at the moment, anything that interested this particular gentleman. But he had promised he would get in touch with him if something worth while did turn up. The shopkeeper was so impressed himself by the card that he could not imagine Nuri bey was not equally impressed; he believed that he had produced the ace of trumps and acted on that premise.
‘So you will bring me your things, Efendim?’ He abandoned dignity altogether and almost pleaded as an old friend who had always attended to Nuri bey’s interests.
‘Double the price you mentioned,’ Nuri bey suggested absurdly, ‘and perhaps … I will see …’
Some kind of almost imperceptible tick-tack was going on between the shopkeeper and the Toad and the beads were swinging about in a lively way. The shopkeeper didn’t exactly say ‘Yes’ or ‘Done’ but somehow the books Nuri bey had were taken out of the carpet-bag again and spread on the counter and money was being brought out, not with a crisp crackle because Turkish money is dirty and limp, but notes were being quite definitely slid out of wallets, pockets, drawers and boxes. A lot of them. Nuri bey looked out through the shop door where the Sultan’s grave lay in the bright sunlight; it was an emotional moment.
After all, he thought as he hurried down towards the covered market, his carpet-bag empty and his breast pocket full, he and his father before him, had spent quite an appreciable amount of money in that shop in the years. He went into the market and bought a soft black leather hand-made jacket for Jenny; it was lined with sheepskin and smelt rather because it had been incompletely tanned. If she had gone, he would give it to the chambermaid. He hurried over the bridge and swung on to a tram.
It was a day with a ring round it, a shining little lacuna of a day, a day when nothing could go wrong. With the jacket hanging over his arm, Nuri bey stood outside Jenny’s room and listened to the laughter. When he rang, the door was at once opened by the floor waiter who, with two of the chambermaids, were having an English lesson. With Nuri bey’s appearance the merriment ceased and there was a general stiffening-up and pulling together; a few murmured words of apology for existing and the staff had disappeared as swiftly as the last of the bath water running from a bath.
‘Oh, Nuri bey, they can only speak about six words of English! They’re longing to learn; the ones who can speak good English get a rise in pay and a more important job. Do you know, I’m sure I can earn enough money to live on if I give English lessons!’
The jacket was an immediate success. He was an ‘absolute angel’ to buy it; she could wear it over her blouse and get her sweater washed. It was just what she wanted: ‘A sheep-minding wesket!’ She disappeared into the bathroom in her satin sari and c
ame out in her slim skirt, wearing the jacket with an air which gave it a certain chic which gratified Nuri bey with a strange new kind of pride.
‘Now I’m presentable,’ she said, ‘we can go and explore this gorgeous, luscious, palace of a hotel.’
They chose one of the four exotic restaurants in which to have lunch and afterwards they sat on the terrace under a sun umbrella and drank strong, sweet Turkish coffee and watched the fountain splashing below and looked over the Bosphorus to Asia.
‘Nobody knows where I am, except the manager, who is my friend,’ Nuri bey remarked.
‘Nor me, but what does it matter?’
Far from mattering, Nuri bey thought, it was, probably, all for the best. When he tried to imagine what might be happening at the yali he felt extremely thankful that he was out of reach. He hoped the exhumation would have gone well, and could think of no reason why it should not have done so. As Madame Bassompierre had pointed out, the weather had been ideal for the operation. The coffin should, by now, have reached its destination. The grave might well have been filled in, either by those who removed the coffin or by the official grave-diggers, but even if this were not so, the replaced boards at the bottom of the grave would have nothing to tell.
Hadji would be wan and worried and Madame Miasma would be excitable, hysterical even. After the fantastic information that Valance’s sister had come for her body, had produced a container for the body, had been left with Nuri bey: now sister, box for the body and Nuri bey himself had vanished and nobody either could, or was prepared to, tell Hadji anything about what had taken place after he left the yali. Possibly he would have scrambled, in his panic-stricken way, up the hillside to the grave and found it filled in. Would that reassure him, or otherwise? The grave had, in any case, to be filled in within the course of a day or so.
And the proles in the square! They were the only certainty; they would be sitting and standing about, watching and listening, their eyes bright and all their mysterious Seljuk impassivity in their smooth expressionless faces.
Undoubtedly at that moment Madame Miasma and Hadji would be suffering from their wicked panic measures in setting fire to Nuri bey’s house, hoping finally and forever to destroy the damning evidence in the small fibre case. Miasma would know that amongst all her chattering friends there was only one friend who would be any good to her now, and that was Nuri bey. And he was the one person with whom she could not make contact, owing to her own viciousness.
Jenny was enjoying herself and, watching the constantly changing expressions on her charming young face, Nuri bey began to sense a deep inner content which did not come from the pleasant contents of his stomach but from a growing feeling that things were working out all right. Madame Bassompierre and Valance’s relatives would soon have the dear departed amongst them and be preparing for decent family obsequies; the calamity-proners would have money tucked about their persons, which would make a change; and as for himself, his house was in ruins and he had lost his possessions but he was on the move; furthermore, he was staying at the best hotel in the world with an entrancing girl and his pocket was stuffed with money to pay for it.
‘You know, old dear,’ she said, ‘this sheep-minding wesket of mine smells. It’s not unpleasant; it’s the smell of Istanbul. And when I’m a dear old lady, I’ll be able to take it out and sniff it and everything will come back to me and when I try to tell my grandchildren about the adventure I had, they won’t listen! They’ll say the poor old dear’s in her dotage!’
‘That smell you notice and which we who live here do not sense at all, is the smell of the primitive tanneries. It pervades the entire city, I am told, and is the first thing people notice when they come. Some think it is the smell of decay as the old imperial city slowly drops to pieces.’
‘All except the Hilton Hotel!’
So they walked down the hill and bought presents for Nuri bey’s sister: material, coffee and china tea. Then they got on a bus and went to Istiniye where Nuri bey saw, to his delight, that the Arab schooner was still loading at the harbour side. He sought out the captain, who seemed pleased to take the presents for the bey Efendi’s sister. They were to leave when loading was complete, sailing the Euxine for Samsum, a slow, slow journey in the fore-and-aft rigged vessel and, given fair winds, would be at Trebizond within a week.
They took a dolmus to the last village but one on the European side and there they climbed the wooden steps into the mosque, a tiny square room, the floor covered with rich rugs, in which there was a strong smell of Wesleyan chapel. They watched the muezzin climb a ladder up the plane tree, the only minaret, and proclaim the greatness of Allah from its lofty branches.
They went to a primitive restaurant on the quay, amongst fishing-boats and nets, and each chose a recently dead fish which was cooked on charcoal and eaten with an accompaniment of numerous glasses of raki.
After this they light-heartedly took the footpath, now being made into a road, over the hill to the last village on the European side. The Bosphorus is at its narrowest and it was here that Darius built across it a bridge of boats a very long time ago.
Sailing the sixteen miles back to the imperial city, they sat close together facing the prow and after they had drunk numerous minute glasses of tea, sold by a youth who continually cried, ‘Çay, çay, çay’ (a sad and lonely sound), Nuri bey was not surprised to find they were holding hands, and put it down to the magic of that day with the ring round it.
He pointed out the yali of Miasma as they passed. It was not yet dark enough for the lights to be on, the door of the bird-room stood wide open. Behind the house, up the steep hillside, rose the graveyard.
‘It could be depressing,’ Jenny remarked, ‘all those miles and miles of neglected graves and all the black pointed yew trees. And as for the yali, I think it is just plain ugly! I wonder what they’re doing, Nuri bey? I bet they’re up to no good!’
And perhaps somewhere, not so far below, the body of Tony Grand swung and lurched with the movement of the tide. Would they have had a sack big enough to take him? Or did they wrap the rocks in sacking and bind them round the legs in the old, old way? But here no corpse could stand upright on the bottom, as in the shallows below the Seraglio. One day in the sky thousands of feet above, and the next, in the water, thousands of feet below: he was a great one for the elements … Tony Grand.
CHAPTER 19
The next morning, on waking, Nuri bey had a unique experience, that of lying on a comfortable bed, against luxurious pillows, between fine linen sheets with nothing whatever to do other than to marvel at how comfortable he was. During the day the bed was a neatly tailored divan, scattered with bright cushions, but at night it was pulled away from the wall and became a four-foot-wide bed and the occupant could then admire or otherwise the frameless modern abstract painting which, in endless variety, hung in every room, tastefully blending with the particular colour scheme.
He had a strange feeling of deprivation, like a soldier unarmed, an admiral without his ship or a trick cyclist without his bicycle. He had no book of any kind, either within reach or anywhere else. He stretched forth a long lean arm and turned on the radio from which broke Turkish music which is not tuneful, nor rhythmic, nor haunting, nor erotic, nor even pleasant, but a harsh, uncouth, grating sound, its main quality being that of persistence. He stared at the abstract, wondering what it represented. He saw his best and only European shirt, which he washed every night, on a hanger in the balcony doorway and thought about hanging in general. And then, as so often recently, his thoughts came to rest on Tony Grand.
‘… the body of Anthony Francis LeGrand, known as Tony Grand, the Englishman for whom an International police search had been going on was found late last night by Security Police at Le Bourget Airport, France. No further information has been released but it is understood that investigations with regard to the circumstances of his death are proceeding.’
It was not Nuri bey’s thoughts but the actual words were coming from the r
adio which was now giving the news in Turkish. He ceased to breathe in case he should miss a word. Then, having lost touch with his breath for too long he had the greatest difficulty in getting it again, as though life had been shocked out of him altogether as in a vagus inhibition, of which people do sometimes die and which is, literally, death from shock. If anybody has ever nearly died of shock it was Nuri bey at that moment.
He tried to take a breath but he had no mechanism for drawing it in. He believed that he did, in fact die, lying there against the pillows, a nothing, a nobody, with a film of darkness over his eyes and nothing working but his hearing, which was unimpaired.
And when the news was finished he wanted to turn a knob so that he could hear it all over again and reassure himself that he had heard aright. He reached for the telephone receiver with the intention of ringing up his detective friend to confirm what he had heard. He stopped in time and instead ordered tea and lemon to be brought. Reality must be regained somehow. Before the tea arrived he was seized with a rigour which shook him like one in the grip of malaria.
The waiter asked if he were ill and Nuri bey answered that he had a touch of la grippe, at which the waiter asked if he would like to see the doctor and Nuri bey answered that he would be better presently: it would pass. After the tea he had a shower and made all the movements of getting dressed.
Who knew that he was connected with Madame Bassompierre and the coffin for the body of her sister Valance? Madame herself and the proles in the market place, and to these latter the information would be as though it did not exist. When an Arab chooses to keep his own counsel, he keeps it, and in this case they would be far too frightened of their own participation in the events to profess to any knowledge of it at all. He tried to remember whether anyone who knew him had spoken to him when he had been helping Madame Bassompierre to make the arrangements at the airline office, and decided not.
If I had not been a kind of useless satellite, he thought bitterly, an unemployed man, gigolo, dogsbody, one who has nothing better to do than to read newspapers to old ladies on Monday afternoons, all this would still have happened but I would have been outside, marvelling, instead of within, shaking from head to foot with fright. No, not quite correct, because the grave in the cemetery would never have been disturbed; or would it? Would Madame Bassompierre, with her immensely persuasive personality, have talked the imam into the act of violation?
