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The Governor arranged for an encrypted telegram to be sent to his wife and two married daughters telling them he missed them all very much but that under no circumstances must they come to the island. He waited awhile until it became completely dark outside. The port area was full of people looking for tickets and a way out of the island. When he was sure that the crowds in the State Hall Square had dispersed and that all the horse-drawn cabs were gone, he walked out of his residence through the back door. The streets smelled of fresh horse dung (a smell the Governor, like most locals, quite liked). The reliably unreliable municipal staff had yet to light the oil lamps along the main roads, though even if they had done so, it would still have been too dark for anyone to recognize him.

The Governor Pasha watched women ushering their children home, beggars pleading with passersby in the market square, people walking and talking to themselves, and old men weeping inconsolably. Outside the Dafni emporium was a sign saying that the mousetraps from Smyrna had arrived, but the shop had not opened at all that day. The Governor was not surprised at all by the unlit, locked-up storefronts he saw, for he had received reports from his informants that the canniest among the city’s butchers and greengrocers had followed the carpet sellers and quilt makers’ lead and made sure to empty their shops and hide their stock away before the quarantine officers turned up. But the diners reeking of meat stew and fried olive oil were still open, and the city’s elderly and unemployed had congregated near the port to watch people come and go. People seemed to be behaving as if nothing unusual were going on. Or perhaps they were afraid and worried, and it was just that the Governor Pasha didn’t notice. Eventually he spotted bodyguards behind him and knew that someone must have recognized him. He had always enjoyed wandering around the city in disguise, and often he wouldn’t even wait for nightfall but venture out as soon as the light began to fade.

The municipality’s elderly coachman Zekeriya was waiting for him, his nondescript phaeton parked in a dark corner in Hrisopolitissa Square. That detestable Nikiforos’s pharmacy was closed. The Governor was sure there was a plainclothes policeman stationed somewhere in this square, but where could he be? Chief Scrutineer Mazhar Effendi was a capable and loyal bureaucrat who had trained all of his spies and police officers well. The Governor knew that if the somewhat-unusual fact of his affair with Marika had not become a political issue or caused a diplomatic incident yet, he owed it to Mazhar Effendi’s efforts to silence any who dared gossip about it. The Governor would sometimes picture Mazhar Effendi sending telegrams to the palace on the matter, if not perhaps to the Sultan himself.

The Governor Pasha stepped onto the carriage in the little square. There was no real need for him to be driven to his destination, which was not at all far. But he did not feel he could turn up at the widowed history teacher’s door with dirty boots during the winter, when it rained and the streets became mud baths, and eventually taking a carriage to see her had become a habit that extended into the summer. As usual they took the turn opposite the gardens of the villa where the historically wealthy Greek Mimiyannos family lived and wound their way through the backstreets of the Petalis neighborhood, but rather than alighting at the usual dark recess concealed by horse-chestnut trees, this time the Governor got off at a square where a cluster of tavernas overlooked the sea.

He noticed that the Romantika and the other two tavernas on the square were quiet that night, and that customers were being sprayed with Lysol at the entrance of the Buzuki restaurant. He began to walk toward his lover Marika’s house, ignoring the stares of those who recognized him.

The seriousness of the plague epidemic and the proximity of death had led the Governor Pasha to the sudden realization that it was unnecessary and indeed demeaning to sneak around like a thief over this “secret” liaison which everyone seemed to know about anyway. He walked through the gate in the back garden as usual, feeling upon him the eyes of the hens in their coop who had first clucked in terror at the thought that he might be a fox, then fallen silent. As he approached the kitchen in the back of Marika’s single-story home, the door opened quietly of its own accord, as it always did. A moist and mildewy kitchen smell and the scent of wet stone hit the Governor Pasha’s nostrils as it did every time he walked in there. In truth, it was the smell of love and guilt.

They embraced each other longingly and found their way in the dark to the room next door, where they began to make love. The Governor Pasha felt that his tendency to give himself over unreservedly in their lovemaking was perhaps unseemly and would usually try, like a conscientious statesman, to slow things down every now and then and show that he was still in control. But today he held Marika as if he were a child who had lost his mother in a crowd and only just found her again. After a day filled with dire news, he was less afraid of opening up than he was of being alone. He made love to Marika again and again that night without inhibitions.

Later, when they sat down to eat, Sami Pasha said: “Lots of families from Ora and Flizvos and the other neighborhoods up there are packing up and leaving. The Angeloses who come every spring and Naci Pasha’s lad visiting from Smyrna had already instructed their butlers to ready their houses in Upper Turunçlar, but then sent telegrams to cancel. Now they’re asking for tickets for their nephews. Sabahattin the stone merchant is trying to leave too, looking for a ticket if he can get it.”

Marika told him what had happened to the daughter-in-law of the Karkavitsases, a family from Thessaloniki who had made their fortune in stone mining and had a house two blocks away. The woman had arrived as she did every year before Easter to stay at the family’s palatial mansion, readied especially for her visit, and had gone with her sister and the butler to her beloved Old Market to shop for spices, visit the renowned herbalist Arif’s famous store, and buy bread from Zofiri’s bakery. But as she walked by a poultry shop, she had spotted its owner inside lying in a drowsy stupor and with a conspicuous bubo on his neck, at which point she had immediately gone back to her neighborhood, had the house boarded up, and taken the first ferry back to Thessaloniki that same morning.

“She didn’t,” said the Governor Pasha. “They couldn’t find any tickets for the Lloyd’s ferry, or for the unscheduled Maritimes ship, so they came to me to see if I could help. It is odd, for these families are much better connected with the consuls than I am.”

They were quiet for a time. As Madame Marika presented the Pasha with the plate she had been preparing for him, she explained that the chickens and the plums were from her own yard, and that the flour had come from the garrison bakery ten days ago. “They bake the most delicious buns at the garrison,” she said. “Do you think the plague can be passed through food, Pasha?”

“I don’t know,” the Governor replied. “But I do wish you hadn’t slaughtered that chicken!” he added, as if to imply he had seen enough bloodshed for the day. Then, surprising himself with his own frankness, he spoke to his lover of a plan he had only just concocted.

“Our quarantine will start in a few days’ time. Even if it doesn’t, the British and the French will be sure to put a five-day isolation order on all passengers and cargo coming in and out of our port. By then it will become much more complicated and expensive to leave the island. On top of that, once quarantine is in place the ferry companies will reduce their services. Those who have foreseen all this as I did have already flocked to the travel agencies and bought every last ticket available. But I have three places reserved for you, your brother, and your nephew on tomorrow’s Messageries Maritimes ship to Thessaloniki.”

It was not quite true that the Governor had specifically booked three tickets for them, but he did know that a few tickets had been set aside for him to use at his convenience.

“What do you mean, Pasha?”

“Madam Marika, if you don’t think you can be ready by tomorrow, I expect the last ship to depart before quarantine will leave the day after. If you wish, I can easily get you tickets for that Pantaleon ferry instead.”

“But what about you, Pasha? When will you leave?”

“What a thing to say! I shall remain here as the lord and Pasha of this land until this scourge has been eliminated.”

In the silence that followed, the Governor tried to see the expression on her face, but it was dark and he couldn’t make it out.

“My place is by your side.”

“This is serious!” said the Governor Pasha. “They’ve killed Bonkowski Pasha—Bonkowski Pasha!”

“Who do you think killed him?”

“It may have just been an unfortunate coincidence, of course. But clearly the same people who got rid of Bonkowski Pasha, who want the plague to spread even farther so that they can pit Muslims and Christians against each other and take advantage of the situation, are now threatening Doctor Ilias too. The poor man didn’t feel safe in the guesthouse.”

“I won’t be afraid with you by my side, Pasha.”

“You should be!” said the Governor, resting his hand on his lover’s knee. “The consuls, the tradesmen, our own holy men, are going to resist every measure we come up with. The epidemic will grow, I can see that already. We will have to deal with that and dodge assassins at the same time.”

“You mustn’t think such lugubrious thoughts, my Pasha. I shall follow all your instructions, and I shall be careful with what I eat. I will keep my door locked and won’t let anyone in, and all will be well.”

“What about the people who deliver your bread and your water, what about your brother and your nephew, and what if someone comes by to sell you plums or cherries, and, if not them, the neighbor’s kids you feel sorry for—won’t you let them in either? Won’t you let me in? I could be the one to bring the plague into your home.”

“Whatever disease you may catch, I should like to have it too, my Pasha. I would rather die than turn you away when you are most in need.”

“It may end up looking like Judgment Day out there,” said the unrelenting pasha. “The Koran says that on Judgment Day mothers shall turn away from their sons, daughters from their fathers, and wives from their husbands …”

“If you continue in this vein I shall interpret your insistence as a personal slight.”

“I knew you would say that,” said the Pasha.

“Then why do you persist in breaking my heart?”

The Pasha was relieved to sense that she had not uttered these words in real anger, but rather as a prelude to one of those little flirtatious tiffs they sometimes liked to engage in. Had Marika converted and become a Muslim, he might have been able to do what other governors did and take her for a second wife without even informing his first wife in Istanbul. But the Pasha held an important rank in the Ottoman bureaucracy. More important, in recent years foreign consuls and ambassadors had taken to claiming that Christians were being made to convert to Islam “under duress,” and their increasingly vociferous protests had turned into a political headache that discomfited Istanbul and had dissuaded the Pasha from that course of action.

“Oh my darling Pasha! What will happen now? What have we done to deserve this? What must we do now?”

“Do as I say, do as your government says, obey the rules. Don’t believe the rumors. The authorities have the matter under control.”

“If only you knew what people have been saying!” Marika exclaimed.

“Let us hear it, by all means!” said the Governor Pasha with an air of formality.

“They say it was Bonkowski Pasha who brought the plague in the first place, and now that he has been killed, the plague is wandering the streets like a lost and orphaned child. And they say that others too will die.”

“What else?”

“Sadly there are still people who say there is no plague. Even among the Greeks.”

“Not for much longer, I should think,” the Pasha. “Then what?”

“Some people say the plague arrived on the Aziziye! With rats that got onto the rowboat.”

“And what else?”

“They say that the old sultan’s daughter is very beautiful!” said Marika. “Is that true?”

“I wouldn’t know!” said the Pasha, as if he had been asked to reveal state secrets. “But anyway, there is no one more beautiful than you.”

CHAPTER 20

When the Quarantine Committee convened again the next morning, Governor Sami Pasha showed them the small room next to his office which had been prepared following the previous day’s discussions. As the discipline of epidemiology dictated, any house which was known to be infected or where someone had died would henceforth be marked on the map that hung inside this little room, and decisions on which streets and neighborhoods should be cordoned would be made on that basis.

Pharmacist Nikiforos very courteously asked the Governor if his advertisement banner might finally be returned to him. “After all, I have attended your committee meetings and voted in accordance with your wishes,” he said.

“What a persistent man you have turned out to be, Nikiforos Effendi,” said the Governor Pasha, opening the only cupboard inside the little room. “Behold!” he said as he took out the cloth and showed it to the delegates.

The Doctor and Prince Consort, the Major, the Chief Scrutineer, the bishops, and everyone else now examined the reddish-pink cloth on which the image of a Mingherian rose had been skillfully embroidered. The Governor Pasha watched their reactions closely.

“Your advertisement banner is proving popular, Nikiforos Effendi,” said the Governor.

“It was Bonkowski Pasha who came up with the idea,” the pharmacist replied.

“Then you will certainly have your banner back, and indeed we have kept a record of it in our ledgers. I may not be able to return this to you right now, but when the plague is over and we are celebrating its defeat, I shall stand before our people and hand it to you; let these esteemed professors, their excellencies the bishops, and these army officers be my witnesses.”

“As you feel is best, Your Excellency,” Nikiforos replied.

“The banner is yours, of course … But the Mingherian rose belongs to the entire nation.”

Historians would later debate whether Governor Sami Pasha’s expression “the entire nation” had been a reference to the people of the island alone, or of the Ottoman Empire as a whole.

After he had placed the cloth back in the cupboard, Governor Sami Pasha took his usual seat at the quarantine meeting table to work briskly through the list of measures he had drawn up with Doctor Nuri and Doctor Ilias earlier and put each item to the vote. These included turning parts of the Castle—specifically one of its more spacious courtyards and a large building inside the complex—into isolation facilities, selecting new burial grounds outside of the city, and determining the kinds of provisions that would be put in place to protect vacated homes. Many such decisions were made in quick succession that would later shape the course of the island’s history and change some neighborhoods of Arkaz beyond recognition. Of all the prohibitions agreed upon that day, the one that was to cause the greatest consternation when it was announced to the public was the ban on crowds and on “gatherings of more than two individuals.”