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“That had indeed come to our attention, Governor Pasha.”

“It is these old Greek quarantine doctors who have been spreading all these rumors. They will waste no time in alerting their friends in the Istanbul press. There are many men here who, urged on by the foreign consuls, would like to see this island end up like Crete: seized from us overnight. It is perhaps not my place to say, but the eyes of the world are upon us, my dear Pasha, so beware!”

Was there a threat in these words? For a moment, the three servants of the Ottoman Empire—one Muslim, one Catholic, and the other Orthodox Christian—eyed one another in silence.

“In any event, it is perhaps more appropriate for the decision on who should be writing what in Mingheria’s newspapers to be made not by you, Chief Inspector, but by me, as I am, after all, the Governor of this island,” said Sami Pasha, feeling emboldened. “Nevertheless, please do not let my words prevent you from including in your report your true medical and chemical findings. We have arranged for you to visit three patients today—two Muslims and the third an Orthodox Christian—so that you may collect microbial samples in time for the departure of the Maritimes Company’s ferry Baghdad to Smyrna this evening. Also, one of our veteran prison guards passed away last night, though we had not even realized that he was ill. If you please, I shall provide you both with guards to accompany you on your visits today.”

“To what do we owe the need for such provisions?”

“This is a small island; however you may seek to hide it, you shall be visiting patients in a medical capacity, and there will be gossip about your arrival,” said the Governor. “Spirits will be broken, morale will suffer. Nobody wants to hear that there is an epidemic. Everybody knows that quarantine means shops boarded shut, doctors and soldiers entering people’s homes, and trade coming to a halt. You know better than I do the unhappy fate that awaits the Christian doctor who tries to enter a home in a Muslim neighborhood with soldiers by his side. If you insist that there is a plague, the tradesmen whose businesses are disrupted shall accuse you of calumny, and before long they will be claiming you’re the one who brought the plague in the first place. There may not be too many people on our island. But everyone here has their own particular view of things, and they are not afraid to express it.”

“What exactly is the size of the population now?”

“In the 1897 census the population of the island was eighty thousand, with twenty-five thousand in Arkaz. The ratio of Muslims to non-Muslims here is approximately even. In fact with the Muslims that have come here from Crete over the past three years, one might say that Muslims are now a majority, though I would not hazard to name a figure, for it would no doubt be immediately disputed.”

“How many deaths have there been so far?”

“Some say fifteen, others more. Some hide their dead fearing that the quarantine officials will come and board up their homes or their shops and burn all their belongings. Others think any death is a plague death. We have an epidemic of diarrhea here every summer, and every summer our Quarantine Master, an old man named Nikos, will insist on sending a telegram to Istanbul to claim it is an outbreak of cholera. I always stop him and tell him to wait awhile. Then out he goes with his spray pump, disinfecting the market, the ditches that carry sewage down the middle of the streets, all the poorer neighborhoods, and the public fountains, and soon enough the outbreak he was sure was cholera has already come and gone. If you report the deaths to Istanbul as cholera deaths, they’ll call it an ‘epidemic,’ and the consuls and the ambassadors will be sure to meddle; but if you report them as ‘summer diarrhea,’ they will immediately be forgotten, and nobody will even notice.”

“The population of Smyrna is eight times that of Arkaz, Pasha, but already the number of dead here exceeds the dead in Smyrna.”

“Well then, it shall be up to you to find out why that may be,” said the Governor cryptically.

“I have seen dead rats around. We had to fight them, in Smyrna.”

“The rats here are not like Smyrna rats!” said the Governor with a dash of nationalistic pride. “Our island’s mountain rats are much more savage. Two weeks ago they came down to the cities and the villages looking for food, raiding people’s homes and kitchens. Where they couldn’t find food, they ate whatever else was on their path—beds, soap, straw mats, wool, linen, kilims, even wood. They terrorized the whole island. Then the wrath of God fell upon them, and they were wiped out. But the rats didn’t bring this outbreak you speak of.”

“Then who did, Pasha?”

“Officially, there is no outbreak at the moment!” said the Governor Pasha.

“But, Pasha, in Smyrna too the rats were the first to die. As you know, we now have scientific and medical proof that the plague spreads through rats and fleas. So we brought mousetraps in from Istanbul. We offered one Mecidiye lira as a reward for every ten dead rats turned in. We called for help from the Smyrna Hunting Club. People were chasing rats on the streets. Even Doctor Ilias and I joined the people in their hunt, and that is how we beat the disease.”

“As it happens, we were approached four years ago by the exponents of two of our island’s oldest, wealthiest families, the Mavroyenis and Karkavitsas Effendis, who—taking their cue from the latest London fashions—wished to solicit my support for opening a members’ club here, similar to the one that already exists in Thessaloniki, but of course this is a small island, and it simply didn’t work here … As for a hunters’ club, we certainly don’t have one of those on our humble island. But perhaps you will at least teach us how to hunt these rats of yours and rid ourselves of this plague!”

The two quarantine experts were alarmed by the Governor Pasha’s nonchalance, but they did not let their feelings be known. They updated the Governor on medical science’s most recent discoveries on the plague and the pathogen that caused it: the discovery that the microbe responsible for killing rats was the same plague microbe that also killed humans was made by Alexandre Yersin in 1894, during the current plague pandemic. Yersin was one of a succession of doctors and bacteriologists who had built on Louis Pasteur’s findings on microbes to achieve extraordinary results in the fight against contagious diseases in French colonial hospitals and in the sprawling and impoverished cities outside of the Western world. Soon the work of the German doctor Robert Koch and others in Europe would also lead to the discovery of the microbes that caused a wide range of other diseases—typhus, diphtheria, leprosy, rabies, gonorrhea, syphilis, tetanus—and the vaccines that could defeat them.

Two years ago, Émile Rouvier, another of the innovative doctors who were constantly making new discoveries at the Institut Pasteur, had been invited to Istanbul by Abdul Hamid to share his expertise on diphtheria and cholera. Rouvier had presented the Sultan with a sample he had brought from Paris of a serum to combat diphtheria, and having delivered a brief and charming disquisition on microbes and contagious diseases, the bacteriologist had then installed in the imperial laboratories in Nişantaşı a series of tools which would allow the diphtheria serum to be produced there cheaply and in large quantities. Noticing that all this information seemed to trouble the Governor Pasha, the Royal Chemist assumed a more somber mien.

“As you know, Pasha, we have seen the discovery of a number of vaccines in recent years, and indeed some of these can now be produced quite quickly in the Ottoman Empire’s own laboratories, but to date we have yet to discover a vaccine against the plague,” he said, clearly setting out the fundamental problem they faced. “Neither the Chinese nor the French have been able to find a vaccine yet. We defeated the plague in Smyrna with old-fashioned remedies like sanitary cordons, isolation measures, and mousetraps. There is no remedy for the plague but quarantine and isolation! Usually the best that doctors can do for plague patients in hospitals is to try to alleviate their suffering. But even that we do not know for certain. Pasha, are the people of this island prepared to follow the required quarantine precautions? This is a matter of life and death, not just for Mingherians, but for the whole Ottoman Empire.”

“When they like you and trust you, the people of Mingheria, Greek or Muslim, can be the most pliable, most accommodating of all!” said Governor Sami Pasha. Then, holding in one hand a cup of coffee that had previously been refilled by one of the servants, he stood up with a flourish that suggested he had said all that he had to say. He walked up to the only window in the guesthouse, which looked out at the Castle and the city, to gaze at the beautiful view and at the sea, whose blueness filled the room like a rapture.

“May God watch over us all, and over this island and its people,” he said. “Though before we even get to them and to the rest of the Empire, we must first protect you and ensure that you remain unharmed.”

“Who would you be protecting us from?” asked Bonkowski Pasha.

“The head of the Department of Scrutinia, Chief Scrutineer Mazhar Effendi, will explain all that!” said the Governor.

CHAPTER 6

Chief Scrutineer Mazhar Effendi oversaw the Governor’s rich and tangled web of spies, informants, and plainclothes policemen. He had first been sent to the island from Istanbul fifteen years ago, tasked—upon pressure from Western powers—with the entirely unrelated quest of transforming the antiquated local law enforcement agency into a modern gendarmerie and police force. While he successfully introduced the necessary reforms (such as keeping separate and alphabetized files on each suspect), he also found time to marry into one of Mingheria’s oldest Muslim families—his bride was Hajji Fehmi Effendi’s daughter—and, like many who happened to settle on the island in their thirties, he fell in love with Mingheria’s people, its climate, and everything else about it. In the early years of his marriage he toured the island with fellow Mingheria enthusiasts, and even set out to learn the old language of the indigenous Mingherian people. Later, when the overly apprehensive Governor Pasha who had commissioned the armored landau instituted a Department of Scrutinia (an office which existed in no other Ottoman province), Mazhar Effendi began to expand his already extensive network of informants, and the relationships he had cultivated during his early years on the island turned out to be of great use as he worked to follow, identify, and arrest the island’s secessionist agitators.

When Mazhar Effendi arrived to meet them, the Royal Chemist and his assistant, Doctor Ilias, found that he was a much-less-conspicuous presence than the Governor Pasha. With his threadbare jacket, narrow mustache, and affable expression, the Chief Scrutineer was a quintessential bureaucrat. In his best bureaucratic voice, he told them straightaway that he had planted spies among the island’s various religious, political, commercial, and nationalist groups in order to track and monitor all their activities. He was of the opinion that there were several factions on the island—among which foreign consuls, Greek and Turkish nationalist militant groups, and certain elements that had been inspired by the snatching of Crete away from Ottoman control—who were angling for this terrible plague and quarantine nuisance to grow and turn into an international affair. Mazhar Effendi had discovered furthermore that there were various groups of unhinged religious fanatics from village sects who were determined to cause trouble and have their revenge on the Governor Pasha for an old incident that had come to be known as the Pilgrim Ship Mutiny.

“In light of all these dangers, you shall have to undertake your patient visits in the armored landau.”

“But will that not draw even more attention upon us?”

“It will. Children here love to follow the landau and tease Coachman Zekeriya. But there is no alternative. Still, you must not worry; every house and every building you will enter is being watched very closely by municipal employees, spies disguised as hawkers, and various others in our network. But I must make one humble request of you: please do not protest at every guard you see. Even if you think there are too many, and find their presence irksome, I must advise you to desist from any attempt at escaping them … Not that you would be able to escape even if you tried, for our spies are razor sharp, and they would catch you immediately … And if you should hear someone calling out to you—‘Most esteemed Pasha, we too have a patient at home, might you come and see?’—do not, under any circumstances, follow their lead.”

Like a carriage escorting a pair of curious European travelers, the Governor Pasha’s armored landau first took the Chief Inspector of Public Health and his assistant to the prisons of Arkaz Castle, as famous as the island itself. In order to keep the mysterious visitors apart from the island’s quarantine doctors, the Governor had told the Chief Prison Warden that they were the state’s two new health inspectors (one of whom was also a doctor). The warden made sure to keep Bonkowski Pasha and Doctor Ilias out of sight of the convicts looking out of the peepholes that had been carved into the Castle’s thick walls. They passed through various passageways and unlit courtyards and emerged onto the bastions. From there they climbed down a treacherous stone stairway overlooking a rocky cliff face crisscrossed by seagulls, and entered a damp, dark cell.

As soon as the crowd milling about the cell door parted, allowing more light inside, Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant understood immediately that Guard Bayram had definitely died from the plague. They had seen that same unearthly pallor in at least three other victims in Smyrna, those same sunken cheeks, the protruding, wide-open, astonished eyes, and the fingers clutching at the hem of the jacket as if to try and claw out the pain. The traces of vomit, the bloodstains, and even the strange smell in the room were also the same. Doctor Ilias carefully unbuttoned and peeled off the guard’s shirt. There were no buboes on his neck or near his armpits. But once they had uncovered the dead man’s stomach and legs, they saw the plague bubo on his left groin. It was large and prominent enough to leave no room for doubt. When they pressed on it, they found that the bubo had lost its initial firmness, which meant that it was at least three days old and that the victim must have died an agonizing death.

Doctor Ilias pulled out a needle and scalpel from his bag and sterilized them with the disinfectant solution he had also brought, while Bonkowski Pasha dispersed the throng at the door. Had the patient still been alive, they could have alleviated his pain by making an incision on the bubo and draining the pus. Doctor Ilias inserted the needle into the bubo and extracted a few drops of the yellowish, gelatinous liquid inside. Once he’d carefully transferred the liquid onto one of the tinted glass slides they had brought to collect microbial samples, and just as carefully placed it in its protective casing and into his bag, their job in the great prison was done. As the disease was definitely plague and not cholera, it was imperative that the sample should be sent to Smyrna for testing.