The Sultan's seal

11

Niko’s smile wavers only a moment as he opens the heavy, brass-studded door to find Kamil Pasha next to a skinny man with a face the color of yoghurt and hair like the setting sun.

“Your arrival pleases me,” Niko booms, a gap-toothed grin beneath his luxuriant black mustache. At first glance, the hamambashou appears fat, but his chest is deep and well muscled from kneading the bodies of his charges. It is thatched with wet black hair. A red-checked peshtemal towel covers him from waist to knees.

“I am pleased to see you.” Kamil turns to Bernie and is disconcerted to see his teeth in a wide grin. “Decorum,” he can’t help himself from saying. “Decorum is important.”

“Yeah, right. Sorry, buddy.” Bernie composes his face into a caricature of seriousness.

Kamil is apprehensive. It is the first time he has allowed anyone to accompany him to the hamam. He is no longer sure how it came about that Bernie is standing here now. Had he suggested it yesterday evening, or had Bernie? Either way, a bottle of potent raki had played a part. He has undertaken to bring Bernie to the baths, and he must make sure the experiment does not go awry. He follows Niko into the cooling-off room, trailed by Bernie, whose eyes are everywhere at once. The other men in the room look shocked, then quickly hide their expressions.

There are whispers. “A giavour, a heathen.”

Kamil sees Fat Orhan propped on his side on a divan, a sheet wrapped about his middle. His red face is immobile, but his eyes follow their progress across the room.

Niko gives Bernie the cubicle next to Kamil’s.

“Hang your clothing in there.” Kamil indicates the wardrobe with the palm of his hand. “Then wrap yourself in this towel.”

“What towel? Oh, you mean this cloth.” Bernie picks up the peshtemal. “You could make a suit out of this amount of material. Or maybe a kilt.” He whinnies a laugh, then catches himself.

“Sorry, sorry. Decorum. I know.” He pats Kamil on the back. “Don’t worry. I won’t embarrass you.”

Kamil cringes at the unaccustomed intimacy. He forces a smile. “I’m not in the least worried.” He goes to his own cubicle and, with relief, closes the door. He hears knocking and rustling sounds from next door, as if Bernie is examining everything. Which he probably is, decides Kamil. Perhaps I would do the same. The thought cheers him, with its intimation of scientific inquiry and exploration of new things. But with decorum, he decides. Truth and decorum. The stamen and pistil of civilization, by which it reproduces itself. Either alone is sterile.

He removes his clothing and opens the armoire. Suddenly he hears the door behind him open. He swings around and grabs the peshtemal to cover himself. Bernie is standing in the doorway, the thatch of hair around his organ glowing brilliant red against his lean white thighs. Kamil grabs him and pulls him into the cubicle, his face pulsing with shame at what the men outside must be thinking. He snatches the peshtemal from Bernie’s hands and orders him roughly, “Put this on.” In that first moment of looking against his will, Kamil has seen something even worse-Bernie is uncircumcised.

Bernie wraps the peshtemal awkwardly around his waist so that it trails on the floor.

“Like this.” Kamil indicates his own neatly tucked towel.

“Right.” Bernie reties his. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost when I walked in.” He flushes slightly. “You know, I’ve never been to one of these shindigs before. It’s a bath, right? So, people do take their clothes off.”

“It isn’t proper to show oneself between the waist and knees.”

“Oh.” Bernie looks puzzled. “You know, there are all these engravings and paintings of the Turkish bath that show women in their birthday suits lounging around.”

“Birthday suits?”

“Naked as the day is long.”

“Men have different responsibilities.” Kamil is displeased with his answer. He really doesn’t know why the rules differ for men. He finds the usual answers unscientific: that it’s traditional; that women are like children, irresponsible. He decides for honesty. “I simply don’t know, Bernie. That’s the way it is in the men’s baths. Keep your towel on at all times.”

“Will do, partner.”

Kamil braces himself to leave the cubicle. He imagines what the audience in the cooling-off room will think when two men emerge from the same cubicle. Such a thing isn’t uncommon, nor is it frowned upon, but Kamil doesn’t want it associated with him. Not because of any principle against male intimacy, but because it rends Kamil’s precious privacy. He prefers to be the watcher, not the watched.

Sitting in the bar of the Hotel Luxembourg, Kamil wonders at the rapidity with which one’s attitude toward life can alter. Instead of poring over his books and orchids, here he is meeting a friend. After their inauspicious beginning in the hamam, Bernie had followed Kamil’s lead assiduously. The giavour’s red hair occasioned curious, if veiled looks, but nothing else had gone awry. Bernie quailed under the forceful blows of Niko’s massive palms and bone-cracking massage. After only an hour in the steam-filled inner room, ladling hot water over his head with his hamam bowl, Bernie complained of shortness of breath and they retired, each to his own cubicle, in the cooling-off room. Refreshed by cool sherbet and a nap, they parted amicably at the door and summoned separate carriages to take them home. A few days later, Bernie sent a message challenging Kamil to a game of billiards.

Bernie is lifting his raki glass to him.

“Lousy game, friend. To your health, though.”

Kamil lowers the lip of his glass so that it meets Bernie’s below the rim. Bernie counters by lowering his. Laughing, they finally clink their glasses near the carpet, with Bernie winning the contest of showing respect.

“I should never teach you our customs. You then use your knowledge to shame me. You are the guest here and should be honored more.”

“I’ll only accept that if you swear you’ll come to the States, so I can reciprocate and teach you American customs.”

“And how do Americans honor a guest?”

“Well,” says Bernie, rolling the words on his tongue in a thick American brogue, “I reckon we give ’em the last swig outta tha whiskey bottle. We sure as hell don’t strip ’em naked, pour hot water on their heads, and beat the crap out of ’em.”

Kamil laughs. “You survived just fine. That makes you an honorary Ottoman.” Bernie takes out a cigarette and offers one to Kamil, who tamps it into the end of his ebony and silver cigarette holder. He lights Bernie’s cigarette, then his own.

“Any luck on your case?”

“Eleven days, and all we have is a fisherman who heard noises from shore that night, a dog barking, and something being dropped into the water. My associate Michel Sevy and I went up there and looked around. There’s a sea bath, a kind of enclosed bathing pool. We found a dead dog nearby, with its head smashed in. But nothing else.”

“Your associate’s name is Michel Sevy?”

“Yes, why? He’s the police surgeon.”

“Nothing. Just curious. Where was this?”

“Between Chamyeri and Emirgan. There’s a fairly large village there. The body was found halfway down the Bosphorus, but the things I’ve learned all point north to Chamyeri. That’s the place where another British governess, Hannah Simmons, was found murdered eight years ago. Her name keeps coming up. I can’t help but wonder whether the two deaths are related somehow.”

“Chamyeri. It means ‘Place of the Pines,’ doesn’t it?” Bernie asks pensively.

“Yes. I didn’t realize you speak Turkish so well.”

“I need to read some Ottoman for my work, but can’t speak it to shake a stick at.”

Kamil repeats slowly, “Shake a stick at.”

Bernie laughs. “Don’t bother learning that one, old buddy. I can’t explain how to use it. You’ll be shooting blanks.”

“Shooting blanks. Now, that makes more sense.”

Kamil suddenly remembers Sybil mentioning that she had just missed Bernie when she first arrived in Istanbul. Thinking Bernie might have crossed paths with the murdered woman at the embassy, he asks, “Did you know her?”

Bernie looks startled. “Who?”

“Hannah Simmons.”

Bernie looks at the raki glass between his fingers as if he hopes to find an answer there. His boyish face looks older when he frowns, Kamil observes. His skin is thick, like that of an animal. It bends rather than creases. His face will have few wrinkles in old age, he thinks, but deep lines.

“No.” Bernie says finally, avoiding Kamil’s eyes.

Kamil lifts the cigarette holder to his lips, draws deeply, and waits.

After a moment, Bernie asks with what Kamil judges a shade too much enthusiasm, “So what do you make of it?”

Kamil ponders how much to reveal. “I don’t know. The dead woman, Mary Dixon, apparently was friendly with a Muslim girl that lives in the same house at Chamyeri where the other body was found eight years ago. The house belongs to a well-known scholar. The girl is his niece. Odd, isn’t it? Both murdered women were English governesses in the imperial harem.” He shrugs. “It’s probably a coincidence.”

Kamil frowns at his own admission. He doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“The girl, Jaanan Hanoum,” he adds, “was a child at the time of the first murder. She’s in France now.”

“What about the scholar?”

“It’s impossible. He’s one of the most respected religious men in the empire. I simply can’t imagine him having anything to do with an Englishwoman, much less with killing her. He has no connection with the foreign community and he’s not involved with any particular faction in the palace. He keeps his distance from the power struggles. He doesn’t have anything to gain by them. He is head of a powerful Sufi order. His position is unassailable because it’s based on his reputation and on an influential circle of relations and friends. His family consists of famous poets, jurists, philosophers, and teachers. He’s also independently wealthy. Why would he kill young Englishwomen? No, my friend, I think we must look elsewhere.”

Bernie takes another sip of raki followed by a water chaser, then leans back and folds his hands across his stomach.

“I brought the pendant along,” Kamil says. He takes the handkerchief with the jewelry from his jacket pocket and spreads it out on the table. “I thought since you know so many languages, you might have have some idea what these lines mean.” He opens the pendant and holds it out to Bernie. “Is it some kind of writing?”

Bernie takes the small silver globe. It rests on his palm, lobes open, like a fat insect.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he exclaims under his breath. Freckles stand out on his blanched face like liver spots.

“What is it?” Kamil’s senses become alert for nuance.

Bernie doesn’t answer. He tilts the open silver shell toward the light and peers into it with great concentration. Kamil becomes aware of the clink of glasses and low murmur of male voices around them, the musk of tobacco smoke. The cigarettes burn down in the ashtray. Finally, Bernie closes the pendant and strokes it with his finger gently as a lover. When he looks up, he seems startled to see Kamil sitting opposite him. The surprise in his eyes is replaced by a look of consternation. He seems to be struggling with something.

He turns the pendant, examining the surface, then holds it to the light and squints to see inside again. Finally, he places it gently on the table between them. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s Chinese.”

“Chinese?” Kamil is taken aback. “Are you certain?”

“Of course. I read it fluently.”

Kamil looks at him curiously. “It’s an amazing coincidence that you should be here to decipher it for me.”

He studies the markings for a moment as if he can decipher them himself. He is thinking, however, about Bernie’s reaction.

“What does it say?”

“The two characters on the pendant stand for ‘brush’ and ‘bowstring.’”

“What?” Kamil is flabbergasted. “What does it mean? Does it mean anything at all?”

“It refers to a Chinese poem, ‘On Seeing an Early Frost.’” He recites:

In autumn wind the road is hard,

Streams fill with red leaves.

For crows what is left but stony soil and barren hills?

I can endure, a withered pine

clinging to a cliff edge,

Or set out on the road brocaded by frost.

Your brush is the bowstring that brings the wild goose down.

“You know it by heart.”

Bernie attempts to look modest. “I know a few of them. This is a poem by Chao-lin Ch’un, a concubine to a Manchu prince about a hundred years ago. Apparently, she and the prince shared a love of poetry and calligraphy. It’s said she was his political advisor, which didn’t endear her to the rest of the family. She collected art objects too, a fantastic collection, apparently. Some European travelers wrote about it. She must have been some lady.”

“What happened to her?”

“When the prince died, his son by an earlier marriage inherited his title and he kicked her out.”

“Would she have returned to her family?”

“No, women like that usually choose to become nuns-Buddhist or Taoist nuns. It gives them a lot more freedom and respect than chasing back to their parents, assuming they’d even take them back. It’s a life of contemplation, not very comfortable, but a lot of people find it rewarding. I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn’t like to try it myself.”

“I can see why it would be attractive.”

“You? Really?” He regards Kamil curiously. “I never figured you for the introspective sort. Somehow I can’t see you spending hours reflecting on the transience of plum blossoms.”

Kamil laughs. “You’d be surprised.”

“Well, friend. I respect that.”

“What about the poem?”

“The poem. Well, it’s a bitter poem. Probably written after the prince died.” Bernie takes a long swig of raki and washes it down with water. “But the last couple of lines always struck me as more of a call to action than contemplation. And I’ve always wondered about the ‘you’ in the last line, ‘your brush.’ Who was she referring to?”

“So this is what scholars of literature do,” Kamil comments with a sly smile. “Like cows eating grass. It gets chewed, digested, regurgitated, and chewed again before it becomes the cow’s food.”

Bernie lets out a guffaw that threatens to spill the drink in his hand. “And we all know what comes out at the end!” Wiping the tears from his eyes, he adds, “You should be a book critic.”

When their laughter subsides, Bernie muses, “She had a lover, a scholar named Kung, who published some fiery articles urging reform of the Manchu government. He left Peking in a big hurry the year after Chao-lin Ch’un disappeared. Reportedly went to Hang-chow. Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s the one with the aggressive brush.” He holds up his glass. “Here’s to love and revolution.”

Kamil hesitates, then touches the rim of his glass to Bernie’s. He puts it down without sipping.

“Why revolution?”

“A few years after the two of them left Peking, there was an attempt to overthrow the Manchus. Unsuccessful. Might have nothing to do with these two, but it makes a good romantic yarn.”

“Is this poem well known?”

“Not at all. I’m not sure whether it was even published. I got hold of it as a privately circulated manuscript. Looks like someone at Dolmabahche Palace has the same manuscript, although I don’t know of any sinologists who would have been around here to translate it.”

“Why do you think the pendant came from Dolmabahche? Why not Yildiz Palace?”

Bernie appears nonplussed. “Well, that’s where most of the women are, right? They’d be the ones wearing a pendant.”

“And reading Chinese poetry?”

“Probably not. I know some of them have really good tutors, but learning Chinese is a lifetime project. Unless the sultan has a concubine from China or from the tribal peoples that border it.”

“The palace prefers Circassians, but it is possible. There’s no way to know; there are hundreds of women in the imperial household.”

Kamil reflects on the coffered ceiling. “I guess it was too much to hope that the necklace would offer some kind of clue. Perhaps someone simply had unusual taste in jewelry and it wasn’t made here at all.” He turns it over with his thumbnail. “But what about the tughra?”

Bernie’s smile does not reach his eyes, which seem fixed on a deep memory, as if the present moment were no more than thin ice. He shakes his head and faces Kamil.

“It’s an odd thing. Can’t help you there. Maybe the pendant was made somewhere else and inscribed with the Chinese characters, then found its way here and was monogrammed with the tughra. Or maybe someone at the palace was interested in Chinese poetry and had it made, then gave it to Mary as a gift.”

The tone is in the wrong key, too lighthearted. Kamil is sure Bernie is hiding something.

“It’s possible. Mary was here for almost a year. But who would know Chinese?”

Besides Bernie. Kamil frowns. He will have to find out more about his friend. The thought saddens him. Kamil rises to go, pleading an engagement.