by Joan Fleming
She went to her birds as into retreat, letting them sit on her shoulder whilst she filled their water and food dishes and put her shrivelled old lips against their smooth beaks in silent, secret communion.
An indefinable relationship existed between herself and Hadji; now, as she went from cage to cage, she cursed him in a long stream of peasant-Turkish, doubtless repetitive, and certainly untranslatable, and the air was striped and crossed and blotted with black awful talk over which the birds spun flimsy threads of twittering and piping.
Nuri bey did not mount the front steps and bang the heavy knocker. He took the door through the wall in the courtyard and walked between the dismal beds of periwinkle and London Pride, round by the rockery to the water steps, where the door of the bird-room stood wide open to the Bosphorus.
If the Bosphorus had given up its dead, they could not have been more shocked and Nuri bey, on his side, was, perhaps, as shocked as they. Madame Miasma, the famous Miasma, who had nearly achieved the position of Sultan Validé, who had talked with Kings and was supposed to have slept with Sultans, was standing in her nightdress, birds in her hair, cursing her faithful servant, yellow and sickly, his European clothes hanging round him like rags, and not a fly-button to his name.
With the last setting of the sun behind the Sublime Porte, these two had flown the Imperial flag, tattered and faded, but still recognizable. And now even this symbol of the old glory had left them and they were nothing more than a couple of indigent malefactors.
But old—old!
That was their defence, the only one they had and, sick with himself, Nuri bey realized it. He could take no revenge. Angry because it was so, he swooped in like an avenging eagle: what terrible actions had they been up to?
‘Nuri, my lion,’ Miasma whined in a pathetic attempt to keep up her habitual manner of talking to him. ‘I trust you have come to help me. I am flung into the greatest distress by the news Hadji has given me. How is it possible that this insane English gunman should have been found in Valance’s coffin?’
‘You know as well as I that the gunman was Valance’s own grandson, half-English, half-French and a drug-runner, acting steward on Zenobia Airways. One of you killed him, or both.’
A shocked and complete denial followed.
He went to the front door, the two hobbling after him, and pointed to the bullet holes. ‘From my little personal revolver,’ Miasma said, triumphantly, as though she had proved her innocence.
‘Exactly. Are you in the habit of firing at your own front door?’
‘Those marks have been there for years and years. Since the First World War, when I had to learn to use a revolver, and so had Hadji and Valance. Many, many years they have been there, Nuri, my lion.’
‘I have not seen them until now.’
‘That does not prove they were not there,’ she snapped out. Her mind was like mercury still, it was impossible to pick her up; at every turn she evaded the straight answer, ignored the direct question, explained away damning evidence. Certainly that wicked boy had been Valance’s grandson. Certainly he had come here from the airport, clamouring for protection. Certainly they had told him his grandmother was dead, had slammed the door in his face; they wished to have nothing whatever to do with him. He had gone away and they had no idea where he had gone. The scene at the front door, when he arrived, in front of the people gathered to mourn the passing of his grandmother, had been unseemly; they had wished to terminate this argument which took place almost over the dead body of his grandmother.
Hadji had been up to the graveyard early this morning; he saw that now the ground had been replaced over the grave and, down below, Valance’s body lay, now at peace with Allah (or God, if he preferred) and nothing would disturb it. If the coffin which Valance’s ridiculous sister Martine had taken back to France contained the body of Valance’s grandson, it was no concern of theirs.
‘Do not deceive yourself, Madame. The coffin rested here for several hours, and Valance’s sister Martine will undoubtedly tell the police this. Furthermore, today the body will be examined, the bullets with which he was killed will be found. Within perhaps a few hours the police will be here, examining the whole house and its contents. Your revolver will be examined and will, of course, have been found to have fired the killer shot. These bullet marks will simply add to the information.’
‘No concern of ours,’ she chanted, like a refrain; meaningless but persistent.
‘Furthermore,’ Nuri bey went on relentlessly, ‘your judgment is terribly bad. You have burnt down my house, certain that it contained evidence of your dealing in raw opium, Madame.’
‘Nonsense, Nuri bey. You can never prove it!’
‘And it was needless. Your great fault is to underestimate the brains of anyone other than yourself, Madame. The young English girl, Jenny Bolton, was speaking the truth when she said she threw the case with everything in it, into the Golden Horn at the earliest possible opportunity. If you had understood what the English are like, you would have known that what she said was true. And I should have been spared my house.’
‘The Golden Horn,’ she repeated with a shudder. ‘You hear that, Hadji, all that money, thrown into the Golden Horn!’
‘Who are you to deplore such an action? We Turks have made a habit throughout history of throwing anything which is of embarrassment to us either into the Golden Horn or into the Bosphorus. The English girl showed great common sense in her action. Madame, I must beg of you to understand that you are at this moment in a terrible position.’
‘Then you must help us, Nuri bey, since it is through you that we are in such a position.’
‘How can you say that, let alone think it?’
‘If you had not interfered with the young girl after the shooting, if you had come away from the airport as quickly as possible, nothing would have happened to involve us. It is all your fault.’
He was dumbfounded and for a few minutes could say nothing but walked angrily up and down the room; he passed and re-passed the cages, whilst the scorching eyes of the two followed him.
At last he told them that, wherever the fault might lie, the police would very shortly be here and, as they knew, in Turkey people were arrested before questioning: ‘Though even in this barbaric country,’ he added grimly, ‘they will have to have a warrant before entering and searching the house.’
‘We are in this together,’ Miasma said. ‘You cannot get away from it. Nobody will believe that you knew nothing of what you carried in the case, I myself do not believe it. I asked you to take the case to the airport for me. A clever lion like you, Nuri bey, would never take it without knowing.’
‘Then, if I knew what the case contained, why should I take it without demanding payment, Madame?’ he returned sharply, and scored a point. Then, taking advantage of the moment, pressed home: ‘Tell me, Madame, who else is in this drug trade with you? You must tell me, otherwise I cannot help you.’
‘This I swear to you, Nuri. I am a link only in a chain of which I know none of the other links.’
‘What about the friend in Hong Kong?’
‘I have never seen her. I think it is a husband and wife, but all I know is that I address my consignments to her.’
‘What is your part, then, exactly?’
‘I receive the raw opium, Nuri. It is left for me in a parcel in the courtyard, ready wrapped, by someone who grows it here and prepares it in the form of packets of locum. Don’t ask me who they are, because they have been to the greatest pains not to allow me to know. The opium is Turkish grown and packed here … beyond that I know nothing.’
‘You are the link who receives the opium and gets it on to the aeroplane, then?’
‘Yes, that is so. It is only the last few years that have made things dangerous for me. Before any aeroplanes called here on their flight to the Far East, getting there so quickly, I sent it by boat. One old skipper obliged me for years. Then he died and I had to make other arrangements. Some of these young stew
ards on the airlines are known to take contraband goods of every kind; it so happened that Valance’s young grandson could easily be persuaded. He, also, was paid from Hong Kong.’
‘Then, I take it that in Hong Kong the opium is converted into the heroin supplied to drug addicts everywhere?’
‘Mostly for Japan, I understand.’
‘It doesn’t matter who gets it, it’s …’ he searched for an adequate word to describe his disgust.
She shrugged. ‘If I did not play my part, somebody else would,’ she said. ‘I ought, by now, to have received an airmail letter containing Turkish notes, in payment for that consignment of eight pounds, eight pounds of raw opium, now at the bottom of the Golden Horn.’ She wrung and twisted her hands in agony at the thought. ‘It’s no good your looking so disgusted, Nuri, my lion; so long as there are human beings there will be those who cannot face up to life and who resort to narcotics, and there will always be people to supply it. Do you not recall, my lion, reading something out of the newspaper to me, some three months ago, about an Ambassador from one of the South American States to a European country, who was dismissed because, with two other men, he was accused of arranging for drugs to be taken into the United States to the extent, when broken into heroin in small quantities, of twenty-one-and-a-half million dollars’ worth? You don’t remember? I do, I remember it well!’
‘Nothing you can say makes it any better!’ he snapped. ‘And I can prove that I took that case to the airport in absolute innocence. I have many friends and acquaintances who will speak for me. But above all, everyone knows that I have never had any money, other than my patrimony.’
‘I see. Then you will let me be taken away by the police and cast into prison until they have built up a case against me. Is that right?’
‘No. I will help you to get away but first I must ask you for money; money to pay the heavy expenses that will be incurred and money, my dear Madame, to pay for the loss of my house.’ As he spoke Nuri bey turned to look at Hadji, a cipher of dejection and fear. ‘You made a big blunder in that act of incendiarism, you must pay for it.’
‘But I have no money, Nuri. At least, very little. If I had, why should I be so upset at not receiving the payment for the last drug transaction? When I met you at the mosque on Wednesday, I told you something of my finances, you should understand that there is nothing.’
‘Then I shall do nothing.’
‘How can you be so wicked?’
He smiled grimly. ‘Wicked? I have lost everything, all my books, which have been my life until now. Everything except what I now appear before you wearing. Everything.’
‘You still have youth, my friend.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Whereas I am old.’
After a few moments’ thought, Miasma signalled to Hadji to follow her and the two stood out in the hall, conversing in low voices.
Nuri bey thought about his sister in Trebizond, who kept rooms for school teachers and who might be glad to take the old woman as a paying guest for a short time. Hadji could sleep in any doorway or beside any fountain, until Miasma had time to make her own arrangements to leave the country. The most he could do was to save them from immediate arrest and imprisonment which might last for months.
Miasma tottered back into the bird-room. ‘You will have to persuade Hadji to part with some of his fortune,’ she said harshly, ‘I cannot get the dirty rat even to admit that he has thousands of lire hidden away not a hundred miles from here. What he hopes to do with it, only Allah knows. Only you can persuade the filthy dog that he must spend it to save his rotten pelt. When the police arrive, it will be too late for him to do anything but cower.’
‘One cannot reason with creatures such as he.’
‘Then beat him, Nuri, beat him senseless.’
At which Nuri bey became extremely angry, a lion at last and a wounded one. He shouted so loudly that the vibration shook the crystals hanging from the chandelier above the love-seat. The content of what he shouted is not important; a roar of angry Turkish sounds a lot more dire than the same things roared in English. The anger of one who is slow to wrath is more calamitous still. Hadji crept back and crouched, terrified, by the door.
Finally, in order to stop the noise, which could, surely, be heard over a good part of Asia, and in Europe, across the water, as well, Hadji produced a flat wad of filthy Turkish lire from some nameless region of his person and thrust them into Nuri bey’s hands.
This lump of material smelled of sweat and dirty rags and essence of Hadji which was surprising, coming from one who washed parts of himself usually five times a day before prayer. But it was, nevertheless, dirty paper printed in a certain way which meant that, in return for it, things could be acquired which could not otherwise be obtained. Slipping it into his jacket pocket, Nuri bey immediately felt the need to wash his hands.
‘I shall go,’ he said in sudden calm, ‘and see what I can do. You must not leave this house, Hadji, for one minute, not to buy bread or yoghourt or anything at all. You must bolt the front door when I leave and shut and bolt the outside door of this room and, if anyone comes, you must stay quiet and not let them know that you are here. Neither of you deserve to be spared what may be coming to you; but I shall do my best to see that you are, though the Allah to whom you, Hadji, are always praying, will, no doubt, know why. I don’t.’
And so saying, he left by the way that he had come.
CHAPTER 21
If the proles, lounging, squatting and merely existing, had heard anything they did not like, nothing of it showed in their faces. Nuri bey swung through the square, turning sharply to the right and swinging upwards past the hovels to the cemetery. It needed nothing more than a glance from him for the original six to pull themselves to their feet in a leisurely manner and, one by one, to follow him up the steep hillside.
Up the dusty, rough path, between the sweet-smelling tangy herbs, the wild lavender and thyme, in the bright sunshine, Nuri bey went, with his great scissor-like strides, thinking of Madame Bassompierre teetering along beside him on her ridiculous high heels. Up and up and up until the great fabled Bosphorus lay before him in all its so-called beauty. Up to the top and over the top. For a few moments he could not see the grave of Valance but presently found the newly filled-in oblong grave and sat down beside it, cross-legged.
What price a déjà vu now? How did it happen? How could he voluntarily repeat the experience? He leaned back against the style of the grave next door and tried to get himself into a psychic state. If once, why not again? He made his mind a blank and waited. But nothing happened except that the proles who had caught up with him, stood at a respectful distance and allowed the Efendi to commune with himself, or Allah, or whomsoever he was communing with. And Nuri bey became a mental nothing, a blank slate upon which the future or the past could scribble and nothing was scrawled thereon.
What he wanted to know was: who or what is in the grave, and the answer, correctly enough, was nothing.
And when he had had enough of nothingness, Nuri bey turned and beckoned the proles to come, and they squatted down on the scented herbs, in a semi-circle round him and became discursive.
Everything had gone according to plan. It had been a beautiful evening; dry, warm, and no wind and they had waited in the square and watched the Pleiades mount in the sky and mount and mount, and when they were nearly overhead they had taken the coffin from its hiding place in the rhododendrons and carried it up here. And here the mule cart had been, already waiting for them. They had brought ropes and shovels with them, as the Efendi had instructed, and within the duration of a nightingale’s song they had loosened the boards, had lifted the body, no longer stiff but rendered unyielding by placing two of the boards underneath it, and they had raised it with the ropes slung beneath the wood and placed it in the coffin, wrapped in the pale green winding cloth, as they had found it. Quickly they had fixed the lid of the coffin down with the latches already supplied. They had replaced the wood in the
bottom of the grave exactly as they had found it; no one could possibly know by simply looking into the grave that the body was no longer there. Early this morning the official sexton and his assistant had come and hastily shovelled back the earth; one of them had watched from over there. Nothing had been suspected. All had gone well and the mule cart had gone slowly away, they following at a distance to find the truck already waiting at the lower end of the main pathway, towards the next village. They had watched the coffin being put on the truck and had seen the truck drive away towards Uskudar and the car ferry.
Nuri bey praised them in the flowery language which they expected. Furthermore, he brought out a few notes and handed them round as a little extra to show his pleasure in a job well carried out.
There were dark deeds at the yali, he said. There were undertakings of the most sly and clandestine; deeds and actions which Nuri bey deplored in his deepest self. But they knew nothing and when the police came they must continue to know nothing. No and nought were to be both operative word and action; and that went for all of them. Nuri bey looked round from black eyes to black eyes and knew with comforting certainty that they would ‘yok’ their questioners unconscious.
Where now cumbersome boats with donkey engines, flimsy and unreliable outboard motors, or simply heavy oars, ply from village to village, the Bosphorus used to be gay with enchanting caiques, those grand, coloured, high-prowed boats which are said to have inspired the Venetian gondolas, and which gave glamour to that dark and melancholy channel. Barely a generation since the last caiques were pulled ashore for ever, the descendants of the magnificent boatmen who manipulated them so skilfully, still use their boats on the treacherous surface with immense skill.
Nuri bey went in search of one such boatman whom he knew personally; it took him some little time because it was important to go about the task inconspicuously. In the end he took a bus to the next village downstream and found the boatman at the Sweet Waters of Asia, once a famous pleasure ground for Ottoman society, where the women would promenade along one bank and the men the other, sometimes throwing flowers across to each other as they walked. There is no romance now, except in the name; a bathing plage, dusty cafés, and a squalid fairground make it unattractive. Nuri bey’s friend seemed to have little to do other than chew little bits of string, spitting the torn-off scraps as far as he was able to project them. Nuri bey offered him an alternative, that of taking him up to Istiniye, immediately, at once, upon the instant, which did not mean anytime from now on. But now.
