The Abyssinian Proof

10

Kamil put on a clean set of clothes he kept in his office, took a fresh horse from the stable, and threaded his way through crowds and traffic back across the bridge to Oun Kapanou Square. He stopped at the police station, where he learned that Ali had not been found and the search inside the basement of the Tobacco Works had been abandoned. No one knew where Omar had gone.

Kamil rode as fast as he could down Djoubalou Boulevard, focused on avoiding the heavy midday traffic of carts and porters. In the distance, he saw the great dome and minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Selim I, which stood on a high terrace overlooking the Golden Horn. He turned left and spurred his horse up a steep dirt road. They couldn’t search all of Charshamba, but he hoped he might find someone in Sunken Village who knew where Ali was. He didn’t know the exact location of the village, but it wasn’t far from here and he thought it should be visible from the mosque.

He dismounted and walked into the courtyard, which was framed by columns of stone and marble. In the center was a fountain shaded by a plane tree. The rhythmic chant of men’s voices sounded from within, reminding Kamil of the Friday afternoons of his youth, when his father used to take him to the mosque near the governor’s mansion. After they moved to Beshiktash, Kamil had spent his afternoons exploring the forested hills instead of praying. His father also gave up prayer when he lost his position as governor. Kamil wondered what measure of duty had made up his father’s faith.

He suddenly felt weary and remembered that he had barely slept the past two nights. He bent over a spigot used for ablutions and let the cool water run across his wrists. He dried himself with a handkerchief and walked to the back of the courtyard, past the great tombs of sultans and their families. There, the terrace fell off sharply. He stood at the edge of the land and looked down into what he assumed was Sunken Village, its whitewashed cottages like toys in an enormous brick box set deep into the earth.

He rested for a moment on a patch of wild thyme in the shade of the great turbe of Selim I. He needed to think before going down into the village. If Remzi was right about the tunnel, then finding it might lead to Ali. But the only person he knew in the village was Saba and he hadn’t even seen her whole face. It would be inappropriate for him to arrive there, a strange man, and ask to speak with a young woman. He would need to be accompanied by the imam or village headman. Perhaps he should have gone to fetch Malik first. He now remembered his promise to meet Malik for breakfast that morning. The search for Ali had driven it from his mind. He’d see what he could find out, now that he was here, then ride over to Malik’s house to apologize and, if he hadn’t been successful in the village, ask him about the tunnel.

Saba’s father was deceased, so perhaps a male relative was the headman. He would ask him for permission to speak with her.

Through the window of the turbe, he could see the sultan’s catafalque draped with embroidered velvet, an enormous turban at its head. Regardless of how much velvet is piled on top, he mused, in the end we’re all just scraps of bone. The thought made him profoundly sad. Yet here he was, chasing down a man so that death wouldn’t take him. Why? Because he was young and fished through a hole in his floor? Because he had a mother and father, sisters, perhaps a wife or a girl he wished to marry? Why did he care? Our families cloak us with life. He thought of Avi, without a family. He thought of himself. Would someone go to so much trouble to save him? Who loved him besides Feride and his nieces? The scent of thyme mingled with the breeze among the tombs and the dull timpani of prayer.

Between the treetops at his feet, he could make out a large house in the village and, behind it, a yard where peacocks strolled. A woman in green looked up at him.

Kamil asked a villager for the headman and was led to the large house, where a servant brought him into a high-ceilinged reception room. The furniture was ornate and gilded, the rugs of expensive silk. Servants waited attentively at the other end of the long room. A woman in a green caftan received him, her long, hennaed hair and powdered face uncovered, although beneath the powder, he thought she looked ill.

When Kamil bent to take off his boots before stepping into the carpeted room, she said in a surprisingly commanding voice, “That’s not necessary.”

“I am Kamil, magistrate of Lower Beyoglu.”

She surprised him again by saying, “I thought so. I am Balkis.” She led him to a long U-shaped divan and bade him take a seat opposite her. “Will you drink some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

Kamil noticed a large gold starburst on a stand above the woman’s head.

“It’s a monstrance,” she explained. “The Christians put a wafer in the center that represents the body of their God.”

Kamil nodded. Endless superstitions.

She picked up a long chubuk pipe and pulled on it, releasing the smoke through her mouth and nose. On her right forefinger was a gold ring carved with a crescent and disk that appeared identical to Malik’s.

“You are welcome here.”

“Thank you. I am pleased to be here. I’m honored to consider myself a friend of your brother, Malik.”

She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Then consider this your home. Malik has spoken often of you, Kamil Pasha. What is it you seek?”

“Do you know Remzi of Fatih?” he asked her.

“No one by that name lives here. Who is he?” Her voice was seductive and threatening at the same time, like a cat growling low in its throat. He couldn’t read her, but she did look sincerely puzzled.

“We’re looking for a policeman who was lost inside a tunnel under the Tobacco Works. We’re told the tunnel leads here. Do you know of it?”

Balkis stared at him, her expression inscrutable. “Maybe my son knows something about this.” Kamil read a faint note of disapproval in her voice. She signaled to one of the servants. “Get Amida.”

A door opened and Saba came into the room, lithe and elegant as a cypress tree. She looked directly at Kamil and greeted him.

Kamil was momentarily speechless. Her face was uncovered and she didn’t wear the usual outer tunic that would have camouflaged her shape. Kamil felt as if he had come upon her undressed for sleep. She wore a red robe, stitched with tiny white carnations, over a soft cotton chemise. A silk girdle emphasized the tiny circumference of her waist and a vest gathered her breasts, swelling them beneath the flimsy material of the chemise. Her chiseled features were framed by black curls escaping from her gauze veil.

Kamil knew he should look away, but he couldn’t. “Saba Hanoum? I’m honored.” She was spirited and aloof, he thought. Someone who would never be tamed-or satisfied with the life of a humble village woman.

Balkis noticed his appraisal of her daughter and frowned.

Embarrassed, Kamil turned his eyes away. “I had the honor of meeting your daughter with Malik at the Kariye Mosque,” he explained quickly.

Saba had pulled her veil across the bottom of her face.

“Saba,” Balkis began in a stern voice, but was interrupted by the arrival of a short, powerfully built man of about twenty. Kamil noticed that he didn’t remove his boots either, as if he were an honored guest, and had tracked dirt onto the carpet.

He looked Kamil over before extending his hand, European style. “Amida,” he announced. He held his left arm stiffly, as if it were injured.

Kamil shook his hand.

“My son,” Balkis added.

The woman and her son looked too much alike to be anything else. Saba was different. She must have taken after their father.

“My mother tells me you’re looking for someone,” Amida said in a voice inflected by the enthusiasm of youth.

“A man called Remzi of Fatih.” Kamil described him.

Amida shook his head, “I don’t know of anyone by that name.” His eyes gleamed with what Kamil thought might be amusement. He was sure Amida was lying.

Balkis looked away, her lips tightly pursed.

A son going his own way, perhaps a son beyond her control. Kamil remembered what Omar had told him about the generations of smugglers who had developed their own rules and traditions, like any other trade. Had Amida been apprenticed to the smuggling trade? He sensed an iron will in Balkis. He could see how a power struggle might develop between the two.

“That’s too bad,” Kamil said to Amida. “He told me some things about Sunken Village that I’d like to know more about.”

“Like what?”

“That there’s a tunnel leading between the Tobacco Works and Sunken Village. I need to know where it is.” Kamil kept his eyes on Amida’s face. He noticed Balkis watching her son carefully too, as if she didn’t trust him.

“Who is this Remzi anyway?” Amida clearly asked dismissively. “Why would he know anything about the village?”

“He’s under arrest.”

Amida blinked. His mouth opened, then closed, the words unsaid.

Kamil got to his feet. “Would you see me out, Amida? I have a few more things to ask you.” Amida clearly knew Remzi, and whoever knew Remzi would probably know where to find Ali.

Balkis gave her son a hard, thoughtful look.

Saba came to Kamil and offered him her hand. He hesitated, wondering if it was proper, but then took it in his. Her hand was cool and firm, like polished marble, but her eyes seemed troubled. He noticed the green was flecked with gold. Something passed between them that Kamil tried, unsuccessfully he feared, to keep from communicating to her. The imprint of her hand in his was a moment too long, the pressure of his hand on hers a degree too hard. For a brief moment, he was unable to move his eyes from hers. She’s concerned for her brother, that’s all, he told himself.

“Kamil Pasha,” she said. “I hope you’ll keep my brother’s youth and inexperience in mind.”

Her words surprised Kamil, since she appeared to be younger than her brother. He saw Amida’s face twist with anger.

“I hope we can meet again.”

Before he had a chance to compose himself enough to reply, Saba disappeared through a door at the side of the room.

Balkis’s frown, meanwhile, had deepened. A woman who has seen much unpleasantness, Kamil guessed, and has learned to brace herself for more. She seemed relieved when Saba left, and turned her attention back to Kamil.

Kamil thanked her and started to leave, but Balkis detained him. She asked him questions about his family, who they were, where they lived. Kamil tried to answer politely, but without revealing too much detail. Amida looked embarrassed.

Finally, her son said with mock sternness, as if he were the parent and she the child, “That’s enough, mother. We mustn’t be rude to our guests.”

Balkis flushed bright red and leapt to her feet. “How dare you speak to me like that. Get out.” She turned her back, and didn’t respond to Kamil’s polite farewell as Amida led him out the door.

As they walked across the courtyard, Kamil turned Saba’s unexpected words over in his mind-that he should keep her brother’s youth and inexperience in mind. He thought it might have been a warning.

“Do you live in the house?” Kamil asked Amida.

“No. I live over there.” Amida pointed to a cottage built against the cistern wall. Kamil walked up the dirt path, Amida anxiously trailing behind him.

As soon as Kamil entered the cottage, he recognized the rug on the floor from the sketch in the police report. It was unmistakably the carpet in which the thief had wrapped the reliquary. Had Amida stolen the reliquary from his own uncle? If so, was he connected to the mysterious dealer, Kubalou?

“That’s an interesting rug,” Kamil noted.

Amida looked momentarily disconcerted. “That rug? It’s been in my family for generations.” He pointed to an armchair. “Please sit.”

A dark-skinned boy of about fifteen hurried into the room. He stopped short when he saw Kamil, and the smile slipped from his face, but not before Kamil had witnessed his unguarded adoration when he looked at Amida.

“Bilal, go fetch us some whisky,” Amida told him.

The boy cast a curious glance at Kamil, then disappeared down a corridor.

The room was furnished in European style, with a sofa and armchairs crammed into the small space. Several Venetian lamps stood on occasional tables, their delicate glass bellies filled with oil. The sofa rustled when Kamil sat. Cheap local manufacture, he thought, stuffed with straw and covered in cotton, its wooden arms gilded. Amida had expensive tastes, but not enough money to complete the picture of fine living. The furniture in Balkis’s house, by contrast, was finely made. She clearly kept her son on a short financial leash.

“Do you play?” Kamil asked, indicating the Steinway piano in the corner. It must have cost a fortune.

“Amateur,” Amida said enthusiastically. He went over and slid his hand along the sleek black lid. “Isn’t it magnificent?”

Amida reminded Kamil of a puppy, one moment earnest, the next playful as he trotted up with a favorite scrap of bone. Not gang material, Kamil thought, and wondered whether the young man was in over his head.

The boy brought a tray with a decanter and two glasses. He poured each man a drink, then squatted against the far wall. Amida offered Kamil a cigarette, then took a small ormolu box from the table, clicked it open, and pushed a lever. A flame shot up. When they had lit their cigarettes, he tilted the box toward Kamil so he could see the elaborate mechanism inside.

“Clever, isn’t it? Every day there are new inventions. To be really modern, you can never rest. Railways, for example, are changing everything. Soon we’ll be able to get on in Istanbul and step off in Paris. Have you heard about something called centrifugal force?” He seemed to have forgotten all about the reason for Kamil’s visit.

“The tendency of rotating bodies to fly outward,” Kamil answered. “I’ve read about it.”

“In America, they have a train based on centrifugal force, a gravity switchback train. It was built on an island called Coney. They call it the Gravity Pleasure Ride.”

Amida seemed starved for conversation. “You know,” he continued, “I spent nine years away, in Abyssinia mostly, but on the way back I spent a year in Cairo. I met the most fascinating people there. Have you heard of Shepheard’s Hotel? It really gave me an appreciation for the modern life. I met an American there, Charles Freer, one of the new men of industry. He runs factories and collects art and antiquities. The two marks of the modern man, he told me, are money and taste. Have you been abroad?”

“I was in England for a year,” Kamil said.

“London, Paris, New York. I’d love to see those places.”

“Are you planning to travel?”

Amida’s mood changed. “I have responsibilities here. I’m going to modernize the family business. Once that’s done and it can stand on its own, I plan to travel.”

“What’s your family’s business?”

“Export,” Amida answered blandly.

“I see, and what do you export?” Kamil could see the jeweler’s wheels spinning inside Amida’s head.

“Carpets,” he said finally.

No carpet dealer would put the prayer rug of Ahmet I on his floor and walk on it with dirty boots, Kamil thought. Did Amida’s “family business” send Remzi to bribe Kamil? Whoever was behind the Tobacco Works kidnapping was well organized, and, unlike the old smuggling families, brutally careless of life and unafraid of the police. Omar thought they were a new and dangerous group. But they had sent Remzi, a common local thug, so perhaps it was only the leadership that was new.

Was that leader Amida? Kamil regarded the young man and thought it unlikely. He didn’t appear to possess the steely bloody-mindedness that made a leader. No one would follow him. Perhaps it was someone else in the village, someone not so obvious. Balkis, perhaps. But she hadn’t recognized Remzi’s name.

“When there are so many interesting new things, it seems a shame to be wasting our time on old pieces, like the reliquary your uncle Malik reported stolen from the Kariye Mosque,” Kamil ventured.

Amida hesitated for a moment, as if scenting a trap. “I agree, modern is best.”

“Did you ever see the reliquary?”

“It’s just an old box.”

“So who do you think would take it?”

Amida shrugged. “Some people like that old stuff.” He refilled his glass, knocking the decanter against the rim.

“Do you know people who buy antiquities?”

“Me? No.” He stood. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“Let me try this again,” Kamil said calmly. “I’d like you to take me to the tunnel that leads to the Tobacco Works.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The Tobacco Works is over by the Golden Horn.”

Kamil waited.

“Look, I heard about the policemen killed over there last night. Word gets around. But I have nothing to do with that,” Amida insisted. “And I don’t know what tunnel you’re talking about.”

Kamil wondered whether that could be true. Amida looked nervous, but it might simply be because he thought Kamil was trying to link him to the murders. He considered again the possibility that Remzi was lying, saying the tunnel connected to Sunken Village in order to cast suspicion on Amida and away from someone else. He decided to apply more pressure and put his face close to Amida’s.

“There’s a policeman missing. If you help us find him, we’ll overlook your role in all this. But if we find out that you knew about it and didn’t help us, then you’ll be spending the rest of your life in a dungeon. He was taken into that tunnel and I’m going to find him. I know the tunnel ends in this village and I’ll find out where. I might begin by tearing your house apart, starting with your piano.”

Amida’s expression swung between confusion, outrage, and fear. “Go ahead and look,” he said. “You won’t find a tunnel in the piano or anywhere else.”

It was clear to Kamil that Amida wouldn’t tell him where the tunnel was, even if he knew. What was he afraid of?

“You’ve been warned,” he told Amida ominously. “If you change your mind, you can find me at the Beyoglu Court. Believe me, you’ll wish you had talked to me sooner.”

He walked out.

He could arrest Amida for stealing the carpet and the reliquary later. Right now, Amida was more useful to him as a potential link to the dealer, especially since his other link, Remzi, was in jail.

Kamil stood at the base of the cistern wall, a massive expanse of rough, broken stone, wondering where to start looking. He walked the perimeter of the cistern, working his way systematically into breaks and around fallen sections. Some homes, like Amida’s, were built right against the wall with bricks taken from the cistern itself, as if they were parasites. He soon generated a trail of curious onlookers, mainly children. He passed out some small copper coins, and the children led him to a rotted wooden door. He pried it open and squeezed into the corridor behind, but it soon ended in a pile of rubble.

The entrance had to be inside one of the houses, Kamil concluded, when he returned, dusty and sweaty, to the village square. He studied the cottages and the enveloping cistern for a few moments, noting the mounds of debris that had collected against the walls. If you multiplied that debris over several hundred years, he realized, the ground was probably five meters higher now than when the cistern was built. He had been looking in the wrong place. Any tunnel built back then wouldn’t be at this level, especially if it had been used for water. It would be far below ground.

He looked around, envisioning a trapdoor in every cottage that led to a rabbit warren of steps and paths running underground in every direction. Omar was right. This was truly a smuggler’s paradise. He wondered if Balkis or Malik knew or would tell him anything. He doubted it. There was a secret to this place, strange undercurrents that disoriented him. He wanted to go back and smash a chair into Amida’s piano until he told him where the tunnel was. What kept him back was the faint possibility that Amida was telling the truth and Remzi was lying.

And how much did Saba know? The thought of Saba set off a cascade of feelings. This was a new sensation, different from his deep affection for Sybil, the ambassador’s daughter who had returned to England, and entirely removed from his physical attraction to the French actress who had been his mistress some years back. Consummation was impossible, of course. Saba was a protected young woman from a respectable family. And if he were to marry, it would be to someone of his own class, not a Habesh woman from Sunken Village, no matter how deep the attraction. Forget about Saba, he told himself crossly. It was a foolish fancy, no different from the actress. Listen to your head, not your loins. The image of Elif’s delicate golden head and haunted eyes came suddenly to his mind, and he felt foolish and slightly guilty.

He stopped before a stone house in the village square. Two shoulder-high pillars flanked the entrance. He examined one, running his hand across the protruding circles carved into its side and exploring its concave top. His hand came away smeared with rust. He brought his fingers to his nose. Blood. Then he noticed the sacrificial stone. For animal sacrifice, just like at any other Muslim shrine. He was beginning to see blood everywhere, he chided himself.

It was late afternoon and the square was empty. The villagers were working in their gardens. Women were inside preparing the evening meal, their daughters helping. Little boys napped in the shade. Kamil climbed the steps out of Sunken Village up to the market district of Charshamba. The rhythmic recitation of ilahi drifted into the street from the Sufi tekke at the corner. He paid a boy to deliver a message to Malik, apologizing and saying he would come to breakfast the following morning. Then he mounted his horse and rode off in the direction of the Fatih police station.