The Winter Thief

29

“Hanoum Efendi,” Feride’s driver Vali pleaded with his mistress, “it’s too dangerous. It’s dark on the water and there’s a fog. There are too many ships out there. Even if we were to reach the other side without mishap, we’d never find the right hospital. And we have no guards. We should send a message home for the house guards to go with us. They can meet us at the pier. But really we should go tomorrow when it’s light. It’s just not safe.”

Feride was convinced that the stolen patient was her husband, and she was determined to find him. Every moment she wasn’t by his side was a moment in which poor care might bring him closer to death. If he wasn’t already dead. It appeared he had already been moved twice, from the Austrian infirmary to Eyüp and now clear across the strait. She gritted her teeth. There was no time to assemble a larger party from her home.

“We’ll lose at least two hours waiting for them. Let’s drive to Beshiktash. That’s the closest point to Üsküdar. Surely someone there will rent us a boat. For enough money, they’ll carry us over on their backs.” She stopped before Elif, who sat on a broken column, seemingly lost in thought. “Come on, let’s go,” Feride said, her black cloak and veil blurring in the dusk.

Elif didn’t budge. “What’s the matter with you?” Feride asked, her voice tense.

She was becoming increasingly impatient with Elif’s unfathomable moods. Her friend had become a stranger. She wondered if she had been wise to bring her along. Given what she had been through, perhaps the sight of damaged people was more than Elif could bear.

Doctor Moreno looked for a moment as if he would intervene but then thought better of it.

“Well, I’ll go by myself then.” Feride climbed into the carriage. “We can’t wait until morning. Doctor Moreno said there’s a danger of sepsis if the poisons in a burn victim’s body aren’t drained. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Doctor Moreno agreed, setting his gray curls in motion. He laced and unlaced his slender hands. “It’s unsafe to go,” he told Elif in a gentle voice, “but probably worse if we don’t.”

Elif stood and said, “Let’s go. I know a way.” She gave Vali directions and climbed into the carriage after Feride. The doctor followed.

The driver frowned and took up the reins.

They drove slowly through the city, delayed by drays hauling wood and coal, carriages, street vendors, pedestrians, and dogs, then more quickly up through the wooded hills above Beshiktash. There they turned onto a lane that wound steeply downward. The road was slick with snow, and the carriage shifted and slid, tumbling its passengers into one another. They could hear Vali cursing as he maneuvered the horses.

Finally the carriage stopped. They climbed out into a mist that completely obscured the Bosphorus and everything on the shore beyond a meter away.

“Where are we?” Feride asked uncertainly. Elif had refused to tell them anything more in the carriage.

“Come with me,” she commanded brusquely, and set off into the fog. Feride and Doctor Moreno hurried so they wouldn’t lose sight of her.

They came up against the side of a wooden boathouse. Feride could hear the water reverberate inside it. She couldn’t see any of her companions and felt completely alone, but not frightened. In fact, for the first time in her life, she felt that she inhabited herself fully. She pressed her face against the heartbeat of the building until Doctor Moreno found her.

Elif reappeared, accompanied by a barrel-chested man with enormous arms, carrying a lamp so bright that it turned the mist around them into a white, almost solid mass.

“This is Nissim,” Elif said, “chief of the Camondo boatyard. He can get us across.” The Camondos were Elif’s wealthy patrons. Nissim clearly recognized Elif in her man’s clothing.

The boatman gestured with his lantern and they followed him into the building. Only tendrils of the fog penetrated inside, and Feride had the sudden sensation of seeing again. The boatman led them to a sturdy rowboat tethered just inside the water gate. He attached his lamp to the front and gestured that they should get in.

The danger of crossing the strait in this weather became clear to Feride for the first time.” Maybe I should go alone,” she suggested. “Why should you risk your lives because of me?” We should all go tomorrow in the daylight, she thought, but Huseyin might be dead by then.

“Nonsense, my dear,” Doctor Moreno said in his calm voice. “Do not meet troubles halfway.”

Vali took a position by one set of oars. Nissim returned with an enormous contraption like a leather bird with wooden wings that he made fast to the back of the boat. Doctor Moreno sat nearest to it, and Nissim showed him how to work the bellows. As he did so, an extraordinary moaning issued from the device.

“Clever,” the doctor commented. “A bagpipe operated by a bellows.”

“Keep it going all the time,” Nissim admonished the doctor. “Other boats will hear us, even if they can’t see us.”

“Who else would be out on the water in a fog like this?”

“There are always fools abroad.” The boat swayed as Nissim got in and took up the second set of oars. A boy slid open the water gate. The craft edged out into the current. Feride clutched her charshaf around her, glad of the heavy veil protecting her against the wind. Around them all was brilliant white as if they were trapped inside a cloud. The bagpipe moaned into the blind night.