by Joan Fleming
There was nothing doing at first, incentive must be produced and this took the form of dirty note after dirty note which Nuri bey slid from his pocket, one by one, keeping an impassive face. When he had made the movement enough times the boatman sprang into action with alacrity and a great exertion of energy, suddenly taking his engine to pieces, banging and screwing them together again; sending some two dozen ragged boys with a rusty can full of holes for petrol; playing a hurried pithy phrase upon his highly-strung drum whilst he waited for their return; tying himself up in acres of fishing-net like a fly which has got entangled in a web; freeing himself with an easy movement which showed that he had not been entangled at all; wiping the seat where the bey Efendi was to sit, with a bunch of dirty cock’s feathers; throwing out a hot-water bottle and some old sacks; borrowing a pair of oars from another boatman and, finally, taking down his personal washing from where it hung drying on a line rigged up in the prow.
After a few preliminary gasps and splutters the engine roared into life in a business-like way and Nuri bey climbed hopefully aboard. Leaving the engine revved up in agonizing noise, the boatman pulled on the fairly clean white trousers he had taken from the drying line and a reasonably white polo sweater, and then brought out a yachting cap with a shiny black peak and a dazzlingly white top which he put on at an angle which would have rivalled the dash of any smart R.Y.C. member on the club lawn at Cowes, and they were off … or nearly so, for twenty yards or so off shore the engine puffed to a standstill.
It would make depressing reading to hear how often the engine died out, how many times it was reinfused with life only to fizzle out again. And because he was apparently determined not to have to return any of the lovely money the Efendi had given him, the boatman gave up struggling with mechanical vagaries and wrestled with the oars instead. It was a gigantic task, requiring great strength and skill, to row across that mighty stream, with its cross-currents and underflows which had nearly proved too much for the Argonauts some years before, but Nuri bey was not too restless nor too strung-up because when about half-way across he could see, with his perfect sight, that the masts of the Arab schooner were still there, in port, distinctive amongst the other masts, and he remained calm and tranquil until they arrived. Indeed, the boatman had shown himself to be so splendidly capable that Nuri bey would have embraced him if he had not been in a hurry.
The skipper of the Arab schooner was sitting in the bows, leaning against a pile of evil-smelling sacks, his legs apart in a wide V which brought his knees well above his head; he was thoughtfully picking at the quick round his thumb nail, and very much relaxed after the ardours of loading. He struggled to achieve a more respectful position when he saw the bey Efendi but Nuri bey at once put him at his ease by sitting down beside him amongst the sacks of sheep skin. They were sailing at once, immediately and now, which meant any time between now and midnight. There is no need to wait for the tide in the Bosphorus, the wind was favourable and had been so for some days; no storm was expected. They should be sailing the Euxine at dawn.
‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’ the Greeks had cried when they saw that murky stretch of wind-swept water and Nuri bey felt a similar cry of triumph rise in his throat at the thought that, with the help of Allah, Miasma and Hadji would also be sailing the Euxine at dawn, and it wouldn’t do Madame any harm at all to bed down for several nights on piles of evil-smelling sacks filled with sheep skins.
This time the bargaining was done as became a couple of gentlemen, and not with notes produced one by dirty one. An initial deposit was made and Nuri bey promised that the rest of the fare would be produced, probably by the male servant, when the two old people were finally pulled on board, shortly after midnight.
If this were not so, Nuri bey declared, the skipper had his full permission to refuse altogether to take the old couple on board. ‘Drop them into the Bosphorus,’ Nuri bey said soberly, but in such a way as to tell an Arab that it was not intended seriously, ‘because they can well afford almost any sum you care to ask.’
The old lady was as nimble as any of the best octogenarians but, Nuri bey advised, it would be as well to have all hands at the ready for that final haul. Further, Nuri bey suggested, it would be as well if landfall at Trebizond could occur during the hours of darkness. He would telephone to his sister and make all arrangements for the old woman’s arrival; it was but a short walk to her house from the port.
‘The Madame will be an infernal nuisance to you as a passenger, asking for attention all the time, so you must keep her out of your wheel-house and do not encourage discourse. She takes drugs and can easily become hysterical, so you will be ready to deal with her promptly should there be any trouble.’
They discussed all these matters gravely and there was only one thing left which worried the captain. It was the question of time. As the Efendi knew, anchorage in that part of the Bosphorus was impossible; to pick up passengers at the least possible distance off shore, in the dark, could be done but would require absolutely accurate timing. The skipper knew the village and even the yali well by sight but it was not possible to say, until he had tried it, how near he could get to it.
Still stimulated by the superb exhibition of boatmanship which he had just experienced, Nuri bey promised that, if the skipper would come inshore as far as he could, Nuri bey would have a boatman ready with boat tied up alongside the water steps of the yali to set out with the passengers immediately the signal was received. The skipper then showed him the lantern with green glass shutter, which he would swing to and fro when he was ready for them.
Standing up, Nuri bey looked into the splendid hawk-like brown face of the Arab captain. He said, not to excuse himself but because he would not wish there to be any wrong thoughts behind that fine-drawn façade: ‘They will pay both of us well for this but, when you see them, you will understand that it is not only for money that one undertakes to get them away from here. It is because they are both so old and both so wicked; it would be undignified that they should hang, undignified for us as a people, I mean, not for them; they have been quite undignified enough as it is. If I do nothing, they will hang, and, though they deserve it, I cannot allow it to happen.’
The Arab understood perfectly. He bowed gravely to indicate this. Nuri bey bowed back.
There was only one more thing. If Allah wished it and they were not to escape, if, in simpler words, anything went wrong, Nuri bey would switch on and off rapidly, five times, one of the electric lights in the yali. The Captain would know that something had gone wrong and would sail at once. When he returned to Istiniye, Nuri bey would make a point of looking him up and talking over the whole affair.
‘For the present … my thanks.’
CHAPTER 22
In the meantime the boatman, with the help of two engineers, had got the engine of his boat going, tearing the air into great jagged strips of nerve-racking sound and ejecting a thin stream of poisonous vapour. They screamed back across the water as though the long-boat had become a speed-boat, with the prow bouncing in and out of the water and spray fanning away to either side in fine style. Arriving back at their starting point, the engine was turned off with such an air of triumph that it was evident that the boatman was now in a very good mood to be persuaded to undertake the midnight operation. As they slipped into the shallows, where Valance’s body had been found, where the Sweet Waters of Asia emerge into the Bosphorus, Nuri bey put his proposition.
What the boatman might or might not have thought was not important; there was no need for any explanation, as there had been to the skipper of the schooner. His intelligence was of a low order, as was his vessel, and all that was required of him was his services in conveying an old couple from the yali to the schooner. It was sailing about midnight and the operation would, therefore, have to take place during the hours of darkness and would involve considerable risk, for which Nuri bey was prepared to pay in full. To give the boatman the necessary shot of enthusiasm, Nuri bey dwelt upon the dangers it would
involve and the skill that would be required. To tie up at the water steps of the yali, Nuri bey pointed out, would be no mean feat.
Incited to do his best, the boatman said that between now and darkness he would borrow and rig up a swivelling headlamp, such as the ferry-boats used, in the prow of his boat. If the male passenger, sitting in the prow, could handle this, the task would be simple. Nuri bey had, unwillingly, to reject this proposal as too likely to attract attention, explaining to the boatman that the operation was a secret one about which it would be best if no questions were asked. As an act of goodwill, Nuri bey gave him all the money that remained and assured him that he himself would hand over the balance when the boat arrived at the yali, and before the task was completed. Which munificence satisfied the boatman completely.
Since the splendid Hilton breakfast, the Bosphorus had been crossed three times, much important discussion had taken place and now the sun was dropping down the sky. Before returning to the yali for the worst part of his undertaking yet, Nuri bey went into a restaurant which was more or less another hole in a wall and ate a great deal of delicious white fish sprinkled with herbs and lemon, which had been alive when he walked in. Thus fortified, he approached the yali fully prepared to find the police already there, Miasma in hysterics and Hadji in a trance of fear.
No doubt the police headquarters in Paris, having issued the news of the find in the coffin to the Press, were awaiting the pathologist’s report. Deprived of the funeral in Père Lachaise, the Bassompierre family and friends, in their deep mourning, would be swarming round the offices in the Quai des Orfèvres like a lot of angry bluebottles.
‘I promise, 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.’ Nuri bey shuddered: how strong would that Christian oath sealed with the sign of the Cross be when she learned that the suspicious customs officers had opened the coffin, searching for contraband goods, and discovered the body of a young man and not of an old woman? The young man who was a blood relation, returned to them like rejected, sub-standard goods, and without an enclosed invoice!
If she acted as the sort of person she was, true to herself, she would simply fold her hands and say calmly over and over again: ‘I know nothing whatever except that I went for the body of my sister and made arrangements for its return, leaving the coffin for that purpose. If I had been allowed to bring the body of my sister in the coffin back with me, this would never have happened. I have no explanation whatever as to what happened to the body of my sister.’ She might grumble extensively about the nonsense of not being allowed to bring a dead body back with her in the aeroplane, the stupid superstitions of the officials of Zenobia Airlines and the ill-placed regard for the feelings of their passengers. A body was a body, an empty shell, she might say practically, and so on, and so forth, confusing the issue and talking the police into a kind of trance, as she had talked Nuri bey himself. But giving nothing away.
Waiting for the bus which would take him back to the yali, Nuri bey heard the hour of prayer being proclaimed by gramophone record from a nearby minaret. Before the next hour of prayer, Miasma and the eunuch should be on the high sea, with no one but the Arab crew to listen to their tune of a thousand lamentations.
It was but a single stage to the yali stop and, as Nuri bey descended, he saw at once two of the proles lounging against the railings. They made no sudden start forward to greet him and Nuri bey behaved equally casually, strolling slowly back in the direction from which he had come. They soon caught him up and, in a short series of indirect Moslem metaphors, told him that the police had called at the yali, had knocked loudly and often upon the door, had gone round through the garden to the water steps and peered in through the locked french window, had returned to the courtyard where they had had a short conference and had gone, but, since their departure, a motor had brought to the village a spy of the police, in simpler words, a plain-clothes policeman, who was now standing at the corner of the square, on the opposite side from the yali, reading a newspaper, with his back against the wall, whilst at the same time keeping a watch on the yali.
The Efendi could not return to the yali without being observed by this ill-gotten character. If he so wished, they could create a diversion which would, momentarily, divert the spy’s attention and, in that fragment of time, he could slip into the courtyard, through the side-door and round to the water steps, where he would no doubt be let in. Nothing else of importance had happened. The cleaning woman had gone to the yali but had also been unable to get in, even though she had turned the lock with her own key; the door was bolted inside, therefore there was someone there. Nobody, other than Nuri bey himself, had left the yali since dawn. The police had questioned nobody, and if they had, they would have been told nothing.
Thanking them, Nuri bey professed his appreciation of their suggestion and sent them off ahead to create their diversion. What exact form the diversion took he never discovered; the proles acted in their own mysterious way, and, sure enough, in the five minutes which Nuri bey gave them, they had kicked up a row of such proportions that, when Nuri bey strolled back into eyeshot, a fuss of a kind that presaged a major revolution was taking place in the square and the plain-clothes policeman was certainly no longer leaning against the wall reading a newspaper but probably in the heart of it all.
He slipped through the courtyard, evidently watched from the window by Hadji because, when he got round to the water steps, the eunuch, with trembling, fumbling fingers, was undoing the bolts and chain securing the french window.
‘Come in, Efendim, come in,’ he begged, ‘the police have been and tried to enter. They have gone away but they will surely return with their warrant, to break in. What are we to do?’
With clammy hands the old man pulled him inside and secured the door behind him. Miasma now trailed into the bird-room. She had decked herself in a splendid creation of purple velvet with a frontage of sequins; her sable stole was thrown round her shoulders, but her hair was a tangled mess, as it had been since the last time Valance had dressed it. Nuri bey had difficulty in checking an exclamation of impatience at her childishness, realizing that she had dressed in her best for her interview with the police, possibly to give herself some badly-needed confidence.
How was he going to cause to hurry two old people whose lives had been frittered away in inessential activities. They had never hurried nor made the swift, economic movements of necessity.
To bark pithy instructions at them would be entirely useless. He opened the operation with ambiguous and sonorous remarks from the Bible, saying things about a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to keep and a time to cast away … and a time to get going, which was now.
‘You must cast away everything,’ he said, ‘and go, and I have made arrangements for you to sail away from here secretly at midnight. You will go to Trebizond, where you, Madame, will stay with my sister until you have been able to make plans to leave the country. And I want to hear no wailing and gnashing of teeth now; you will have plenty of time for that when you find yourself in gaol, probably for the rest of your lives, awaiting trial. For if you go to the prison island now, you will certainly never leave, but will die there.’
‘But I am innocent,’ she screamed.
‘Can you prove it?’ he asked calmly.
‘I want to live, Nuri bey. Can you not understand? I do not wish to end my life now; I should still have happy years ahead, amongst my possessions, I wish to live … I must … I shall not give up, nor die!’
‘But, Madame, you shall live. It is with this very object in mind that I have been working for you all day, and have spent all the money which Hadji gave me.’ He then outlined the plan which he had laid for their escape. ‘It will cost much money but I know that Hadji has it, even if you have not.’
A magnificent sight in her finery, she trotted up and down the room, past her bird cages, holding her face between her
hands. He knew what was worrying her; it was Hadji, without whom she was as someone without a limb; Hadji whose miserliness had now put him in the position of pay-master; whose very servility, over the years, had now altered the balance of power. She longed to be rid of him but could not do without him; they were as two old trees whose roots were so entwined that they could not be divided.
‘Come,’ Nuri bey said briskly, ‘a small handcase each, your jewels, Madame, the relevant papers with regard to your possession of this house, any important bank documents you may possess, a change of clothes, and that is all.’
‘Impossible,’ she shrieked. ‘All my beautiful clothes, everything I have is all I have; everything you see around you. How can I go with nothing?’ and so on and so forth until Nuri bey became angry and once more shouted so loudly that the crystals on the chandeliers tinkled softly and the old wooden boards shivered imperceptibly and the yali might well have slipped to its knees and away downstream with the current.
The next three hours were the most painful Nuri bey had ever spent. His difficulties combined those of Zoo attendant with male nurse in a lunatic asylum. As darkness fell no light must show in the yali windows. In any case, the watcher on the corner might well have instructions to telephone for the police to return as soon as he knew someone was in the yali. Hadji found a couple of rusty Aladdin-like lamps of such incredible antiquity that they might even have been handed down from the vestal virgins themselves. These had to be trimmed and filled with oil, which operation, undertaken with trembling fingers, took Hadji the best part of an hour in semi-darkness. Nuri bey shut the doors of the rooms with windows overlooking the courtyard and the street so that no light would be seen.
