The Silence of Scheherazade Read online

  Sensing that her mother was becoming agitated, Edith took a step forward. ‘Please come this way, Monsieur Mitakakis. We will go into the library.’

  After he had handed his hat and jacket to Butler Mustafa, the lawyer from Athens, leaning on his cane, followed Edith to the library, which lay to the right of the spacious hall. If Juliette had intended to follow them and press her ear against the door, the eyes of the butler upon her convinced her to go to her room and get dressed. What kind of business could a lawyer, especially a lawyer from Athens, have with Edith? Could the girl have become involved in some matter her mother was unaware of and got herself into another calamitous situation? After all the scandal and humiliation, would she now have to go through all that again?

  Upon entering her bedroom, Juliette grabbed the bell on her mirrored dressing table lined with bottles of cologne and rang it furiously. Then she sank onto the satin-covered stool in front of the dressing table and waited for her maid. She turned her back to the mirror, not wishing to look at herself so early in the morning. It was as if her reflection in the silver-framed glass might tell her the most terrible things. Standing up, she put a record onto the gramophone and absentmindedly turned the handle. In the back of her mind she knew very well the connection between Edith and Athens, but she prevented her thoughts from going there. It was a very old matter, a matter that had long been closed. She had ensured that her daughter was raised in a peaceful environment. And who would dare make such a claim after all these years?

  Turning her face from the window, she was startled to see that her bed had not been made. The imprint of her head on the feather pillow looked like a volcanic crater. She reached for the bell on her dressing table and rang it for a second time, even louder and more violently. Anger helped, masking her swiftly rising fear for a time. She touched the large green and blue enamel stove in the centre of the room. Tepid! Have pity! In a fury, she left the room and stood at the top of the stairs. As the shrill ringing of the bell reverberated around the empty stairwell, there came the sound of two pairs of running feet. Her personal maid Irini and the housemaid Zoe both appeared on the bottom step at the same moment. Since they had run from two different directions, they almost crashed into each other.

  ‘How many times must I tell you that it is forbidden to run in this house?’

  The women bowed their lace-capped heads.

  ‘What is going on, may I ask? I have been ringing for you, Irini, for one hour. In which part of hell were you?’

  ‘Signomi, forgive me, Madame. I was collecting laundry from Sidika. I was over at her shack.’

  ‘And why has my bed not been made? Zoe? The stove has gone out. Why are all these shameful things happening today? Did you change your apron?’

  The sight of the servants obediently walking up the stairs with bowed heads soothed Juliette somewhat, but as soon as she entered her room, the question of why that poor excuse for a lawyer downstairs wanted to see Edith came back with a vengeance, just as an agonizing toothache will return even after oil of cloves has afforded a brief respite. Her anger swelling, she turned to Zoe.

  ‘Change the sheets as well!’

  ‘We changed them two days ago, Madame Lamarck.’

  ‘Are you questioning me, Zoe? If I say change them, you will change them. I can no longer smell the mastic on them. Tell Sidika not to iron my laundry again without washing those hands of hers that stink of cigarettes and to add more lavender to the wash water. I only tolerate her because she is Mustafa’s wife – one cannot even understand what she says.’

  ‘As you request, Madame.’

  Scratching her cheek, Juliette walked towards the window. In the garden below, Mustafa was talking to the gardener in front of the arbour. Suspicions grew within her: what were they talking about? The rain was coming down heavily. She watched the bare boughs of the sour-cherry tree being battered by the wind for a while. No, she was worrying over nothing. She must think other thoughts. For example, about this evening’s tea party. Who would attend, she wondered. Had fewer guests come to her most recent tea parties? Of course not. Obviously, it was simply a coincidence. What a day for such a downpour! Hopefully, the Indian spy would keep his word and come that evening; she would ensure he stayed for dinner too. He would definitely attract the ladies’ attention. Edith had acted like such a mule at breakfast – the slovenly girl hadn’t even shown any interest in the spy, whereas when she was a child, she used to go around saying, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a spy.’

  Ah, when Edith was a child…

  She turned to Zoe, who was making up the bed. ‘Light the stove too. You’re going to make me ill. Have you been smoking opium or what? Both of you have your heads in the clouds.’

  The women continued working silently.

  ‘Irini, come and help me with this corset. Don’t dawdle. It’s noon and I am not yet dressed. Did you bring my beige dress? No, not that one! My goodness, Irini, do you think I’m going to be playing golf? The plaid one with the blue sash at the waist. I will wear that for now. Before evening tea, you will prepare the blue-green silk. I swear, you have already worn me out.’

  *

  In the library downstairs, the aroma of Monsieur Lamarck’s pipe tobacco lingered still. Dimitrios Mitakakis stretched his plump, hairy hand towards the fireplace as he watched the blue-tipped flames consume the logs. The room had a convivial atmosphere, which gave a person confidence. With the fire crackling, one could even forget the wind beating at the windows. The carved walnut desk in the back corner still seemed to be in use, with papers and inkstands upon it. Volumes of French, English and American literature bound in red, burgundy and black lined the glass-fronted bookcase that extended the entire length of one wall. Some of the books had yellowed writing along their spines; others had titles inlaid in gilt so shiny that they could be read from a distance.

  As soon as Edith had tugged the tasselled bell-pull that connected the library and the indicator board in the kitchen she collapsed into the brown leather armchair in front of the fire, without waiting for her guest to seat himself first. She was biting her lower lip, which was now flaky as a result. The leather briefcase lay open on the side table between the two brown armchairs. It was full of documents and she stared at the Greek letters on the top one, trying to decipher what this important matter that concerned her could be. She longed for another cigarette but could not find the second one Sidika had rolled for her in her pocket.

  They didn’t speak until the servant who had brought in the coffee on a silver tray had left the room. Dimitrios Mitakakis had sat down on the other leather armchair. With a gracefulness unexpected from such a short, stout body, he turned towards Edith.

  ‘Mademoiselle Lamarck, I shall speak briefly and openly. I anticipate that what I am about to say will cause you considerable shock.’

  He busied himself looking through the green cardboard folders in the briefcase on his lap. The girl, her head tilted slightly towards her shoulder, was waiting calmly but expectantly for him to continue. Her face was drained of colour, her eyes dark. How different this pale-faced child was from the spoiled, self-centred, rich girl he had imagined on his journey from Athens to Smyrna. Perhaps his business would proceed more easily than he had feared. It was good that the mother had been left outside. The girl had a frowning face, but there was something soothing in her silence. She wasn’t making small talk just to fill the silence. He took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat.

  ‘I have brought you news of an inheritance.’

  Edith knitted her thick eyebrows.

  ‘If you accept the will of my late client, a considerable fortune as well as a house, Number 7, Vasili Street, will come into your possession.’

  The lawyer waited to see what effect his words would have. A deep crease appeared between the girl’s eyebrows. When she offered no response, he felt obliged to add, ‘Of course, you may refuse the inheritance.’

  Setting her coffee cup on the side table, Edith leaned towards
the man. ‘Where on earth is Vasili Street?’

  The lawyer was relieved that the young woman had switched from French to Greek.

  ‘In Smyrna. Very near Punta Station, the Aydin Railway terminus. The people there call that neighbourhood “the English houses”. I presume you are familiar with Aliotti Boulevard? Yes, vevea, of course. Vasili Street is one of the roads that crosses it. Mostly British, Italians and wealthy Greek families reside in this neighbourhood.’

  Upon arriving in Smyrna the day before, his first business had been to locate the house and ascertain its condition. The railway passed very close to the property, and the neighbourhood seemed to be filled more with bachelor British engineers than with families. The house, which had been locked up for years, was in a dilapidated state, as was the garden, but now was not the time to mention this.

  ‘I do not understand. After my father’s death, all of his assets were shared out. No one mentioned such a house to me. There must be a mistake. I have an older sister, Anna Margaret, whose husband is in Smyrna. He owns a considerable number of properties in Bournabat and Boudja. His name is Philippe Cantebury. Is it possible that it is he whom you are seeking?’

  Dimitrios Mitakakis took a cigarette from a silver case hidden in his waistcoat pocket. During his client’s final days, as the man suffered through the grip of pneumonia, he had attempted to prepare the lawyer for this meeting with the girl, but Mitakakis had always closed down the subject, not wanting to tire the poor man on his sickbed and also wishing to demonstrate his skill as a lawyer. Now, sitting opposite Edith’s frowning face in the Lamarcks’ tobacco-scented library, he was squirming, not knowing how to tell her the truth.

  ‘May I also have a cigarette?’

  ‘Ah, certainly. Excuse me, I should have offered you one earlier. I did not consider. Please take one. You look so young.’

  So it seemed the women of Smyrna smoked cigarettes in the company of strange men.

  Edith waved his remarks aside with her hand, inserted the cigarette into the ivory holder she took from her pocket, and, not waiting for the lawyer, lit it with her father’s lighter.

  ‘Mademoiselle Lamarck, this is a rather complex matter. I wish that you could have received the knowledge from someone other than myself – from your mother perhaps.’

  ‘Shall I call my mother?’ The furrow between the girl’s eyebrows deepened.

  ‘Oh, no, no. That is not necessary.’

  After handing the green cardboard folder to Edith, the lawyer rose to his feet. With one hand in his pocket, he limped to the window and gazed out at the gardener chatting with the Turkish butler in front of the arbour.

  ‘This document?’

  Dimitrios Mitakakis turned round. Throwing his cigarette into the fireplace, he stood across from Edith, clasped his hands in front of him, bowed his head, and spoke.

  ‘It is thus, Mademoiselle Lamarck. My client, the late Nikolas Dimos, that is, the individual who has bequeathed this property to you, himself… How can I express it? It is his assertion… It was his assertion… We lost Monsieur Dimos very recently, may he rest in peace. Ahem. To tell the truth, little lady, “assertion” is a mild word for this claim. To say that my late client was quite positive on this point would be more accurate. And now that I see with my own eyes, I am without a doubt convinced that my client was correct.’

  The girl’s eyes had grown large and her chewed fingernails were buried in the leather of the armchair like claws. Taking a deep breath, the lawyer raised his head.

  ‘Mademoiselle Lamarck, I have come here to inform you that your true father was my late client, Nikolas Dimos.’

  Tilkilik Days

  Avinash woke at dawn. The call to prayer was sounding from the Mumyakmaz Mosque next to the Menzilhane Inn where he was lodging. He had slept well, in spite of the dogs howling in chorus throughout the Tilkilik neighbourhood. He lay on his straw mattress with his eyes closed, listening to the sweet, sad call of the muezzin echoing through the emptiness of the morning.

  He sometimes met the muezzin, Nuri, on his way to and from the market. He was a youthful, good-natured man with a thin, pale face. From their chats, Avinash learned that Nuri went regularly to the Sufi Dervish lodge, and one evening Avinash went too, as a guest, to attend a session of spiritual music-making. There he discovered that Nuri was a talented flute player. When the young muezzin blew into his reed pipe, the sounds he produced seemed to hold all the mysteries of the world. Listening to him, Avinash’s eyes filled with tears. He remembered his grandfather’s words: ‘Music forges the purest connection between man and God.’ Raki was also drunk at the lodge’s musical gatherings. His superior at the Secret Service, Maximilian Lloyd, found this the most surprising detail and noted that Avinash’s infiltration of the Muslim cult was a great achievement. Avinash preferred to remember the night not as a professional success but as a divine experience that satiated his love for music and for God.

  When the call to prayer came to an end, he rose and shoved the straw mattress against the wall. With the mattress out of the way, the room was as bare as it had been on the day he arrived. A year had passed since he’d come to live like a monk in this empty room at the Menzilhane Inn.

  On the evening of his arrival in Smyrna, as soon as he debarked from the ship, Selim, who had been hired to do the footwork by his servant Ravi, had found this inn. He was a resourceful boy. Avinash had warmed to him when they first met at the harbour. The son of a refugee from Crete, he very conveniently spoke both Turkish and Greek. When asked, he would say he was eighteen years old and would soon do his military service and become engaged to his sweetheart Zeyno, who lived over by the Hatuniye Mosque. However, Avinash did not believe he had completed his fifteenth year.

  While Ravi was supervising the trunks, which were able to pass through customs with ease thanks to the British Consulate having bribed the official, the boy was explaining the business of Smyrna port to Avinash. The wide shore road was full of offices, agents and warehouses, and a little further on there were European-style shops and hotels. A gentleman like Avinash would surely like to stay in one of those hotels.

  While he was talking, Avinash lost himself in observing the carts, the tables, the peddlers with their baskets, the bags spilling out into the middle of the street, the leather packages, the barrels, the crates, the bales of wool, the camels waiting calmly amid stacks of logs and iron, and the porters wearing colourful waistcoats, short, baggy trousers, and fezzes on their heads. Smyrna harbour was a vast organism made up of people of every colour and race, every kind of living, breathing being and all manner of material things. Ferries were sounding their horns, dogs were barking and anchors were clanging. Oarsmen’s shouts mixed with curses from the harbour porters. And then a horse-drawn tram entered the fray! The conductor tried to clear a way through by ringing the bell hanging from the ceiling as the horses stood there shaking their heads in disapproval at the piles of stuff blocking their road.

  After they had locked up the trunks that had been loaded onto a single-horse cart ready to be taken to an office building at Yemiscizade Bazaar reserved in Avinash’s name, they followed Selim on foot. He led them to a tranquil place, a travellers’ inn set around a rectangular courtyard shaded by fig and lemon trees. The boy had quite strongly resisted bringing them there. He had tried to settle Avinash in one of the European hotels at the quay or in one of the converted office buildings at the Kemeralti Bazaar. Failing those, he suggested trying the grand old mansions between Tilkilik and Basmane that now served as hotels. It was possible that Selim received commissions from these establishments. When Avinash insisted on a traditional inn in central Tilkilik, a now sulking Selim led him to the Menzilhane Inn, at the top of Kecheciler Street.

  This was exactly the sort of place Avinash had dreamed of. The great confusions of the narrow streets jostling with carts did not intrude here. Peace descended on you as soon as you stepped into the courtyard of the inn, effacing the world outside. The only sounds were the cooin
g of pigeons and the plash of a fountain. Unlike the buildings in the bazaar, this inn was designed to accommodate travellers. There were just three or four shops at the front, facing the street, and the rooms arranged around the courtyard were sparsely appointed but meticulously clean.

  The Menzilhane Inn reminded Avinash of the time he had spent in Rishikesh with his grandfather. The monastery where his grandfather had stayed had had a cool, shady courtyard like this one. Even the vine-wreathed arbours were the same. The monastery was located on the banks of the blue-green River Ganges in the foothills of the Himalayas beneath peaks that were perpetually snow-capped. It had been built for old men who wished to spend the last years of their lives in meditation and prayer, and Avinash had spent the year before university there, with his grandfather.

  Having risen from his simple bed, Avinash went out to the courtyard, rinsed his face in the ice-cold water of the fountain, splashed his neck and armpits, and washed his teeth with bicarbonate of soda. In the muggy pools of the neighbouring gardens frogs had long since awakened and begun to croak. Grey clouds, having drawn their loads from the sea, were scudding towards the mountains, bathing the city in an unusual leaden light.

  Although this was Avinash’s second winter in Smyrna it was the first time he had experienced such cold, grey weather. He was pleased with the change. He enjoyed spending time inside on dark days. He remembered his small room at Oxford. From the kitchen of the accommodation where overseas students like himself stayed there used to rise aromas that his time in England had made him forget – pickled cabbage, garlicky yogurt, salted fish, curried vegetables. These smells wafted into the corridors, the bedrooms, the living rooms, the souls of the people.

  He returned to his room, took off his boots and placed them beside the door opening onto the courtyard. From the Konak neighbourhood came the screams of seagulls diving over the fishing boats. A ship was blowing its horn. In one of the nearby rooms someone was cursing someone else – a lazybones who wanted to sleep. Pulling the curtains, he took a deep breath and began his morning exercises in the empty space left by the mattress. His attention, which had been diverted by noises and thoughts, began to settle. His soul filled with breath and contentment.