第 37 页

On his way back from the Post Office that day, the Major took a longer route, crossing the creek and wandering around the neighborhoods where Muslims were in the majority. In a shady garden that gave onto a quiet street in the Bayırlar neighborhood, he saw three boys crying under an olive tree, one of them in tearing sobs, the other two without a sound. Two gardens down, he heard some middle-aged, headscarf-wearing ladies arguing among each other: “You brought the disease here.” “No, you did!” In the Tuzla neighborhood he watched a dockworker who knew what precautions to take against contagion failing to persuade the women he was talking to. On the same road he discovered that a holy man from the Zaim sect was giving out charms against the disease, and that if you stood waiting silently in his garden, crossed your arms diagonally over your chest, and bowed thrice while repeating the words “I have come to pay my respects to His Holiness,” then he would let you into his lodge.

In one street he would feel the hush of death and fear and the helplessness of the doctors and bureaucrats, but by the time he had walked on to the next street and the next garden, he would find himself back in the dusty, sleepy alleyways of his childhood, and his fear would abate.

He was walking down a street with a rivulet of sewage streaming through the middle when he spotted Zeynep among a cluster of around eight to ten women and girls coming toward the same street farther ahead to his right. For a while he managed to follow the group of women, who were wearing colorful dresses and white headscarves, without anyone noticing that he was watching them. But this did not go on for very long.

Zeynep and the others suddenly vanished. The Major tried to find them again, wandering into empty, unkempt gardens, through tall grasses, and along walls covered with creepers. A woman in a headscarf was hanging laundry on a line in her back garden as if it were the most ordinary day in the world, while her two young, barefoot sons wrestled each other nearby.

He emerged onto a shabby backstreet which he thought he recognized from his childhood. He was like someone in a dream now, watching himself from the outside. But as soon as he became aware of this, he also realized he had lost the girl, and he decided to return to the State Hall.

When he saw his mother that afternoon, he knew that he would no longer be able to hide that he had fallen in love. Already his mother’s demeanor seemed to imply there could be no other subject to talk about. “I heard you followed her,” she said. “She liked that.”

The Major was amazed and rather pleased by how fast the news had traveled to his mother, and if he hadn’t been worried about alarming her with his impatience, he would have told her then and there to “start making arrangements.” But his mother understood anyway just by looking at her son’s face. “She is an exceptional girl,” she said evenly. “Every rose has its thorns, but this is the kind of opportunity that presents itself only once in a lifetime, and the fact that you can recognize its worth shows that you do have some sense in you after all. Are you ready to do anything for her?”

“What do you mean?”

“After all these troubles, the girl will want to go away to Istanbul and be free of this Ramiz once and for all. It is certainly true that her brothers did not return the gold their father received from Ramiz, or at least not all of it. So that shameless Ramiz is still bothering her, for he knows he can rely on his brother Sheikh Hamdullah for support.”

“I’m not afraid of Ramiz, but there’s a quarantine now, so we wouldn’t be able to go to Istanbul yet. Tell her I will take her to China first with the old sultan’s daughter!” said the Major.

“If you tell her, ‘I will take you to Istanbul,’ it will be much more believable, and much more effective, than any talk of China!” his mother replied. “What does your Lami think?”

The man his mother had referred to as “your Lami” was a childhood friend of the Major’s who knew all the gossip in the city. The Major strolled across sunny, rose-scented streets and under the shade of blooming linden and magnolia trees until he reached the Splendid Palace Hotel. He and Lami sat on a pair of wicker chairs in the hotel terrace, under the shade of its orange-and-white-striped sunshades, at a table with a view of the docks. They could smell roses, thyme, and Lysol. Thin-faced Lami had been born to an Orthodox mother and a Muslim father. When his father died, that side of his family had left the island, and Lami had been raised by Greeks. Now he was the manager of the Hotel Splendid, whose red-and-brown linen uniform he was currently wearing. The hotel’s spacious lobby and terrace were frequented by Italian businessmen who had run the island’s stone quarries until ten years ago, by wealthy Greeks, Ottoman bureaucrats, ostentatious and more or less influential Muslim gentlemen, government clerks, soldiers in civilian dress, and occasionally even by the Governor himself, so that anything of any importance that ever happened upon the island was bound to be discussed there.

Lami knew it was Zeynep who had broken off the engagement, and warned the Major that Ramiz might exploit his brother’s standing to retaliate in some way. Ramiz was known for his erratic behavior, and it was a good thing the Governor had put him in prison. When he learned that Ramiz had since been released, under orders from Istanbul and on condition that he never set foot in Arkaz again, Lami said, “The Governor should put him right back in the dungeons!” though he also conceded that this might not be so easy to do.

“Why is that?”

“The Governor Pasha is not fond of Sheikh Hamdullah, but he also knows it would be difficult to enforce quarantine without his approbation.”

Some historians have argued that for an important functionary of the Ottoman Empire like the Governor Pasha to be so wary of Sheikh Hamdullah and so fearful of doing anything that might vex him was a sign of inexplicable “pusillanimity” on the Governor’s part, as there was no reason for an Ottoman governor pasha with a whole garrison stationed in his province to be so intimidated by a sheikh. Pashas in Mingheria had always wielded more power than sheikhs, as they would in the soon-to-be-established Turkish Republic too, and indeed this is the foundation that modern Turkish and Mingherian secularism both rest on. But today we might perhaps view the Governor’s attempt at persuading the populace to follow quarantine restrictions by taking a softer line as the more realistic and expedient political approach.

“The whole island was after this girl, you know,” said Lami. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yes. I’ve fallen in love.”

“She has two older brothers, Hadid and Majid,” said Lami. “They are twins; they used to own the Twins’ Bakery, but it’s shut down now. You should have them volunteer for your Quarantine Division … They’re not the brightest, but they’re honest people. The best bread the Splendid Palace kitchens ever got was from the Twins’ Bakery!”

“I love this girl so much that I refuse to believe her brothers could have done anything wrong!” the Major proclaimed.

This conversation eventually led to plans being made for the Major, Zeynep, and her two brothers to meet in the city. But it was another three days before they were able to come together at the Hotel Splendid’s half-covered terrace on Istanbul Street. Afterward the Major would speak frankly to Doctor Nuri of how excited he had been when he had arrived and seen Zeynep there.

The brothers had shaved their beards and worn clean shirts in an effort to appear more attuned to city life, but it was obvious from the fezzes on their heads and from their constant fidgeting that they did not feel comfortable there. Their mother and the Major’s mother had already agreed on a bride price and on the gifts and jewelry to be exchanged, so that subject was not broached at all. The already tattered and faded quarantine announcement that hung on a wall in the restaurant of the empty hotel looked like an ancient relic, and somehow that detail made the plague seem even more frightening.

“We have put ourselves in danger by gathering here …,” the Major began. “According to quarantine regulations, it is forbidden for more than two people to meet at a time.”

“We are in God’s hands!” said Majid. “You mustn’t fret; our destinies are already written, and it is not for us to worry about what is to come!”

“You will have even less reason to worry if you embrace quarantine restrictions and volunteer for the Quarantine Division. Eleven more people have died from the disease just yesterday and this morning. Some are still hiding their dead.”

“Believe me, Major Kâmil Bey,” said Zeynep, “I am less afraid of catching the disease and dying young than I am of growing old on this island without ever having lived at all.”

“To know so clearly what you want is a quality to be admired,” said the Major.

They were sitting across from each other, their faces so close that they could not look directly at each other for too long. The Major realized he was at risk of falling rather acutely in love with this dark-eyed girl, and as he imagined the agony of pining for her during lonely nights in remote military outposts, he knew there was nothing he wanted more than to marry her.

Satiye Hanım, who had already begun negotiations behind the scenes with Zeynep’s mother and brothers over the wedding party and other matrimonial arrangements, now quickly settled everything and moved matters forward. The Major had also secured the Governor Pasha’s support with any obstacles that should arise against the nuptials. Ramiz’s entourage had been spreading rumors about Sheikh Hamdullah being upset and angry about his brother’s treatment. People were convinced that Ramiz would return to the city and cause some kind of fracas.

The Governor made it a point of honor that the Major should be able to marry the girl he had chosen to marry, and celebrate however he wanted, without having to fear anyone. As for where they should live, it was agreed that the safest and most fitting home for a newly married Ottoman officer would be the Hotel Splendid. So it was that the Major, in consultation with his future wife, decided to take up residence in a room on the top floor of the Hotel Splendid, like some wealthy European gentleman.

The Governor Pasha, who was keeping track of every detail, advised the Major to get his wedding day shave done by Mingheria’s most famous barber, Panagiotis, in his shop at the foot of Donkey’s Bane Hill. It was noon on Tuesday, the fourteenth of May, and having begun by boasting that, over the past twenty years, every man getting married in Arkaz—Christian or Muslim—had come to him for his wedding shave, Panagiotis said: “You seem concerned, Commander; I’ve noticed you looking at my little shop and all my tools and wondering, ‘Are they infected?’ But you see,” he went on, “I’ve followed the quarantine doctors’ advice and boiled all my scissors and razors and tongs. I’m not afraid for myself, but I still do it because I know that more refined customers, like you, expect me to.”

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

“We are all in the hands of our Mother Mary and Jesus Christ!” said the barber, glancing into a corner of his shop.

The Major couldn’t see the icon that was the source of the barber’s fortitude, but spotted an assortment of brushes, bowls, mortars, knives, razors, jugs, and sharpening stones. The barber told him that he knew that the doctor who was married to the old sultan’s daughter had come to the island to stop the outbreak, and that the Major whose cheeks he was shaving now had been tasked with protecting them. Then he began to speak of how devoted Mingherians were to their sultan. Every winter and spring for nearly forty years now, there had been insurrections upon the Ottoman Empire’s islands in the Levant. These uprisings were organized by the islands’ Greek populations, who wanted to be ruled by Greece and—as in Crete—wished to break away from the Ottoman Empire. Every summer the Ottoman navy’s battleships—perhaps the Mesudiye or the Osmaniye or the Orhaniye with its newly fitted gun battery—would bomb the Greek villages on these rebellious islands based on information gathered by regional chiefs and local spies. Sometimes the Ottoman soldiers stationed there would follow up by raiding those same villages and putting any suspicious individuals in prison. Bombarding the Greek towns, villages, and ports on these islands was, in effect, a kind of punishment. But not once in the last twenty years had the Orhaniye and its new gun battery come to Arkaz and started shelling its Greek villages!

“Why is that? Because Abdul Hamid knows that the people of this island, Christians and immigrants too, are all loyal to him! Because fifteen years ago Mingheria was the wealthiest island in the whole of the Levant, and nearly half of its population were Muslims. Look at this, Commander,” Panagiotis Effendi continued. “There won’t be more than one or two barbershops in the whole of Istanbul where you can find this mustache oil and these beaked hair tongs. I had this bottle sent from Berlin a good ten years ago, and I’ve taught every lord and gentleman in Mingheria, Greek and Muslim, how to use it. Back then they thought that to style a mustache like Kaiser Wilhelm’s, straight and thick at the sides and sharp at the tips, all you had to do was trim the middle short and twirl the ends as thin as you could. But when you are twisting the mustache into shape with the hot curling iron, it is just as important to rub some of this beeswax lotion in, slow and steady so that it gets properly absorbed.”

The barber studiously performed the steps he was describing. The most vital point was this: the hairs on the cheeks and along the cheekbones must never ever be used to bolster the mustache. That was unsightly and vulgar, though regrettably there were still some barbers in Berlin and Istanbul who did it. But experienced and modern-minded barbers knew that any hair on the face must be shaved twice over before the grooming began. The French company that produced the beeswax glue which gave Wilhelm his special mustache, upright and sharp as a knife at the tips, and whose recipe they guarded as if it were an elixir, still sold its wares in its shop in Berlin. But even when the bottle he’d got from Germany had run out, the Mingherian barber Panagiotis had achieved the same results by grinding raw acorns and Mingherian pine resin in a mortar, mixing in rosewater made from the same plants that the murdered chemist had first brought to the island with Abdul Hamid’s permission, and adding some dried chickpea powder he’d bought from Vasil the herbalist. If the Major wished, the barber could style the tips of his mustache even sharper and stiffer, though they wouldn’t want to alarm his dainty and headstrong bride-to-be.

On his way back to the State Hall with his sharp-tipped Kaiser Wilhelm–style mustache, the Major walked down the near-deserted Istanbul Street and came across a plague-crazed madman. During his childhood, there had always been a few lunatics in Arkaz whose presence was widely tolerated. The Major himself had been quite fond of most of them. Children would tease them; Greek ladies and elderly citizens would pity them and give them alms. Everybody knew of the Greek madman Dimitrios who always wore women’s clothing, and Chained Servet who would burst suddenly into shrieks and howls in the middle of crowded shopping streets. When these two crossed paths in the market, on a bridge, or by the docks, they would hurl all manner of indecencies at each other in a mixture of Greek, Mingherian, and Turkish, before finally coming to blows. Children and adults alike enjoyed their antics. But after the outbreak of plague, these time-honored lunatics had vanished, to be replaced by even-crazier and more obsessive plague lunatics whose presence tended to provoke not pity so much as loathing and fear.