Chapter 3
The estate agents are well aware of the minimum requirements for an official residence and yet they bring me to view impossible apartments. I suppose they must offer up a certain number of prospective clients to predatory landlords. The apartment I was shown today – the hundred and fiftieth I have viewed – was tiny and in a building on the very edge of a great chasm. Though the risk of earthquakes is negligible, I don't think that Walter would relish living on the brink. Of course, his lady might enjoy the excitement. At lunchtime, I bought you a mirror, a copy of an Ottoman design. To avoid showing the image of a living creature, mirrors were hung face to the wall with the decorative silver backs on show. Your mirror will hang that way until you come and turn it around.
I looked at another unsuitable apartment – less unsuitable than the others, so I brought the Countess along. She waited until we were almost out of the agent's hearing before trumpeting, like an elephant, 'Affreux!' I'm afraid that she is beginning to blame me.
Today some furniture arrived from the Office of Public Works for our Chancery. Once the phones are connected, we'll move in. We have the third floor in a very acceptable building. The first and second are occupied by an American bank. There is a large foyer and I hope that it will be possible to install our policeman there. At present he has a chair in the hotel corridor. He is on duty from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays. If an assassin comes out of hours, I'll hide behind Walter.
The manager of the hotel has just called to the office to say that there had been no power failure on the morning of the reception. Walter enquired. I suppose he would feel less silly if his fall could be attributed to external factors.
The Countess and her cousin were so merry and voluble at the Chinese reception this evening that everyone fell to speaking French – to the astonishment of our hosts. English has quite replaced French as the language of diplomacy in Ankara but tonight we all dusted off our French. Vive la France!
Midnight. I'm just back from the Swedish Embassy, a little shaken by witnessing a promising career take a nose-dive. Sven, the Swedish third secretary, is orthodox and precise to a fault. However, it was his third function of the evening. The previous one had required him to win the confidence of a raki-drinking Turk, about to conclude an important timber deal with Sweden. Sven came late to dinner and not entirely sober.
The Swedish dining room is narrow and badly laid out: one door, a broad table, just sufficient room behind it to allow the waiters to circulate. Sven's place, empty, was near mine, at the foot of the table. We were eating sanglier dans son sang, chewing hard. Their excellencies pushed back their chairs as their tummies expanded. Suddenly Mrs. Luxembourg hitched up the tablecloth and screamed 'Assassins!' The security men rushed in. Only that so many legs protected him, Sven might well have been shot.
Apparently, when he found that he couldn't get to his place without drawing attention to himself, he backed off a little to consider, caught his foot in a carpet and fell. Nobody noticed. He felt like Moses when the Red Sea opened. Between the two ranks of legs there was a clear passageway to the bottom of the table. He would have made it if Mrs. Luxembourg hadn't stretched her legs.
Poor Sven! Wherever he goes, the tale will precede him. A reputation for levity, for unsteadiness, is a terrible thing. I find it sobering to consider how a man's career can be wrecked by the impulse of a moment. I think I may promise you, darling, never to do anything precipitately. In this respect Walter is not a bad model. His ponderous approach irritates me occasionally, but he can be trusted never to go off at half cock. I am making myself a mug of cocoa. Then I'll go to bed. Don't forget to write to me.
Tried to clear a backlog of visa applications today. That consular case I mentioned – the Irish woman, disappointed in love, who drowned herself in Kusadasi – is proving difficult. I have a slight headache.
Before I came here, I was given a booklet and told to practice encoding and decoding messages. It is anticipated, given local conditions, that the skill may be needed. To practise I correspond with Seoirse (Personnel) in code. His last asked me how I feel about Ankara. I dashed off a boastful little 'weni, widi, wici' in reply. You once told me that that is how Caesar himself would have pronounced the words. Unfortunately O'Donovan, with whom I had that unfortunate incident in Argentina, saw the text. He commented, at coffee, to the effect that young O'Gorman still didn't know his 'V's from his 'W's. I shan't let it bother me.
Walter was in a talkative mood this afternoon, having made advances in his plans for Turkish investment in textiles, in Ireland. He says he is afraid that the right-wing response to the leftist movement will be devastating. The right-wing tendencies in the army and police forces alarm him. He claims that militants of the right, the 'Grey Wolves', who took action against left-wing students in Ankara University last August, are being trained as street-commandos, in camps outside the major cities, with the blessing of the Deputy Prime Minister.
'Fascism, Denis. Fascism,' he pronounced.
It is true, Millicent, that the air is crackling with political fervour. I have just read that a boy of seventeen, charged with the attempted murder of a sister, pregnant out of wedlock, gave the political persuasions of the putative father as part of her offence. I would not bring you out here if I really thought that things will get as bad as Walter forecasts. He enjoys being an alarmist. When he had got me thoroughly upset, he said that I must discount half of what he says since he is a natural pessimist. He finished by claiming, sardonically, that there is an unrecognised Freudian dimension to the current unrest, that the whole question of left or right political orientation, in the individual, depends on whether, as a youngster, in dressing, he wore his penis to the left or to the right and whether he developed a complex about this or not. I am depressed by his gloomy outlook and irritated by realising that every time I 'dress' in future, I'll suspect that I'm making a political statement.
Full-Bodied Wine : A Vintage Murder Page 2
