第 7 页

Bonkowski Pasha ordered the victim’s belongings to be incinerated, but when nobody was looking, he picked up the scalpel and cut off the small amulet that was tied around the guard’s neck. He disinfected the amulet and put it in his pocket to examine later, then walked out into the daylight. He could tell from the state of the guard’s corpse that the disease would spread quickly on this island and that many more people were going to die, and the weight of this knowledge was such that he felt a pain reaching from his throat all the way down to his stomach.

As they passed through the gnarled jumble of streets in the old city, Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant Doctor Ilias saw that the coppersmiths had opened their shops, that the blacksmiths and carpenters had already got to work despite the early hour, that life in the city went on as if nothing were happening. A cafeteria that served the neighborhood’s tradesmen had also ignored the rumors and opened its doors. When the chemist pasha noticed that Kotzias Effendi’s pharmacy (which looked more like a spice emporium) was also open, he stopped the carriage, got off, and went inside.

“Do you have any acide arsénieux?” he asked the shopkeeper coolly.

“No, we’re out of ratsbane,” replied Kotzias, owner of the Kotzias Pharmacy. The pharmacist felt nervous, for he could tell that the distinguished-looking gentlemen who had just walked into his shop must be important people.

Bonkowski Pasha saw that in addition to selling spices, dyes, seeds, coffees, and herbal teas, the pharmacist also supplied pastes, ointments, and old wives’ remedies. Even in his busiest days crossing the breadth of the Empire as Chief Inspector of Public Health and Sanitation, Bonkowski Pasha never forgot that he was a chemist and a pharmacist first and foremost. On Kotzias Effendi’s shelves and tables he now saw some of the readymade medicinal products supplied by well-known pharmacies in Istanbul and Smyrna. As a young man, he would often come across pharmacists selling old wives’ remedies in small provincial towns, and he would never hesitate to enlighten them on the principles of modern pharmacology. But this was not the time.

The bays and the hotels and tavernas along the shore were dotted with colorful sunshades, and the outdoor restaurants teemed with cheerful customers. The landau traveled through linden-scented backstreets and up past lavish Greek mansions until it reached Hamidiye Avenue. The peach trees were in bloom, and there was a distinctive, appealing aroma of roses in the air. They saw gentlemen wearing hats and fezzes and villagers with leather slippers on their feet walking under the plane and acacia trees that flanked the wide Hamidiye Avenue. Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant gazed uncomprehendingly at the row of houses that lined the creek all the way to the market, at the storehouses, the hotels, the horse-drawn carriages and their dozing drivers, at life unfolding on Istanbul Street as it wound its way down to the port and the Customhouse. They saw that classes had begun at the Greek Middle School, and that the travel agencies had put new notices and advertisements for ferry companies on display. When they stopped in front of the Hotel Majestic and gazed out at the city and its mostly pink, yellow, and orange hues, the guilt caused by the knowledge that all of this beautiful, winsome way of life was about to come to an end became so difficult to endure that Bonkowski Pasha began to think that perhaps he had been mistaken.

But he would soon realize that he had not made any mistake. Bonkowski Pasha and Doctor Ilias were next led to the Hagia Triada neighborhood, to visit a stone cottage surrounded by olive trees. There they found a coachman named Vasiliy, who had been driving around the city for fifteen years, lying in a semiconscious state, dazed with pain, and with a substantial bubo protruding from his neck. In Smyrna, Bonkowski Pasha had often seen how the plague microbe’s stupefying, befuddling, and wholly debilitating effects could, within a couple of days, reduce many patients to a state where they became unable to talk—if they could talk at all—in anything but an unintelligible stammer. Most patients who reached this point died fairly soon thereafter, and very few survived.

When the patient’s teary-eyed wife pulled at his arm, Vasiliy seemed to come to his senses for a moment, and tried to speak. But his mouth was dry and wouldn’t open properly, and even when it did, he could only manage a stutter.

“What is he saying?” asked Bonkowski Pasha.

“He is speaking in Mingherian,” said Doctor Ilias. The coachman’s wife began to cry. Doctor Ilias tried to apply the treatment he had used with patients in Smyrna when they had reached this stage of the illness. With his scalpel he made a delicate incision on the bubo, which was still hard and fresh, and patiently drained the pearly, yellowish pus that burst forth, wiping it off with a piece of cotton until there was no more liquid left. The patient’s queer, unpredictable twitching knocked one of the doctor’s glass laboratory slides to the floor. Although they were already sure that the disease was plague, Doctor Ilias still took utmost care in readying the samples that were to be sent to Smyrna for testing, diligently dabbing the liquid he’d extracted from the patient onto the slides he had prepared.

“Make him drink plenty of boiled water, sugar water too, and yogurt if he is able to eat,” said Bonkowski Pasha on his way out. He personally propped open the door and the room’s single small window. “Most important: you must keep the air in the room fresh and boil his clothes clean. He must not exert himself, and he must sleep as much as possible.”

Bonkowski Pasha suspected that these recommendations he had so often given to the comparatively wealthy Greek shopkeepers that had been his patients in Smyrna would not be of much use in this case. Yet despite all the discoveries that had been made in Europe over the past decade on the subject of bacteria, he still believed that clean air, a peaceful environment, and a hopeful disposition could “in some measure” help a plague patient to recover from the disease.

Past the Stone Jetty (with its backdrop of steep black-and-white mountain peaks) beloved by Romantic painters, the armored landau entered the Taşçılar neighborhood and stopped outside the garden gate of one in a long row of derelict houses. The guide Mazhar Effendi had assigned them told Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant the doctor that this was the area where Muslim youths who’d fled Crete after the troubles there three years ago had now settled. This particular house was occupied by three young men who hauled cargo and worked odd jobs or skulked about in the port, and according to the guide kept causing trouble for the Governor Pasha who had so generously housed them here.

Three days ago, one of the youths had died. Another who had since also fallen ill was now beset by a fierce, agonizing headache, but his body was fighting back with sudden, forceful twitches. In Smyrna, two out of every five infected patients had died. There were also people who were exposed to the microbe that didn’t fall ill or even realize they had it. Doctor Ilias felt he might be able to save this young man and set about trying to treat him.

First he gave him an injection to lower his fever. Then, with help from an older man the boys referred to as “Uncle,” they took off the patient’s discolored clothes. Despite a careful examination, Doctor Ilias could not see any buboes in his armpits, on his groin, or around the backs of his legs. Regularly dipping his fingers into disinfectant solution, the doctor probed the youth’s armpits and the lymph nodes in his neck, but could not detect any hardening or unusual tenderness there either. A doctor who had not already been informed about the outbreak of plague would never have concluded, from observing the patient’s accelerated heart rate, fever-parched skin, bloodshot eyes, and delirious rambling, that this was a case of plague.

Bonkowski Pasha noticed how carefully the rest of the household was watching the doctor and could see in the two youths’ faces that, since their friend’s passing, they had quite understandably been gripped by a fear of death, but this did not trouble him, for he knew that it was only this fear that would ensure people paid heed to quarantine doctors. What he could not understand was why the youths, despite having been so clearly in need of a doctor, were still using their dead friend’s belongings.

In truth there was only one thing left to say now to this household and to everyone on the entire island: “Get out of here!” Bonkowski Pasha wanted to shout. “Run!” He had heard stories from European doctors of how this disease had killed tens of thousands of people in China, how in some places entire families, villages, and tribes had been completely wiped out before they had even had time to comprehend what was happening to them. That same devastation and those same horrors would soon, he feared, destroy this calm and charming island.

He could see that the microbe had “infiltrated” deep into Arkaz, that it was spreading undetected, and even disinfecting with spray pumps would be of no use in clearing houses like this one of the disease. What really needed to be done was to completely evacuate contaminated buildings and, if anyone protested, resort to the same ruthless methods that had been employed hundreds of years ago: lock people up inside their own homes and nail the door shut. In areas that were affected particularly badly, and where everyone was infected, another old and effective remedy was to burn people’s homes and belongings.

In the afternoon they found buboes on the neck and groin of a fourteen-year-old barber’s apprentice in a house in the Çite neighborhood. The boy was suffering from headaches and uttered such agonized screams with every fresh wave of pain that his mother would start crying too, and his helpless father would flee to the back garden, then give up and quickly come back inside. Only much later did they realize that the boy’s grandfather, who was lying on a daybed in the adjacent room, was also ill. But nobody was paying him any attention.

Doctor Ilias made an incision on the hard but not-yet-swollen bubo on the boy’s neck and cleaned the wound with disinfectant solution. As he was performing this procedure, he noticed the boy’s father approaching with a prayer sheet, which he pointed at his son’s body. Bonkowski Pasha had often seen people caught in the hysteria of an epidemic hoping for some benefit from these sorts of prayer sheets. Christians too would sometimes appeal to priests who were willing to hand out talismans of this sort. As they left the house, Bonkowski Pasha turned to the clerk that the Chief Scrutineer had assigned to them and asked him who was issuing these consecrated prayer sheets.

“The holy man whose prayers and benedictions the whole island trusts, and whose blessings are the most powerful of all, is of course the sheikh of the Halifiye sect, Hamdullah Effendi,” said the clerk. “But he is not like these other unscrupulous sect leaders who’ll hand out amulets to anyone who comes knocking on their door offering money. There are many who try to copy him. That must be where these prayer sheets came from.”

“So people are aware that the blight of the plague is upon them, and they are beginning to take precautions.”

“They are aware that there is some kind of pestilence, but they do not fully realize the gravity of the situation,” their guide replied. “Sometimes people request love charms, or amulets to cure their stutter, or to protect them from the evil eye … The Governor Pasha has got our informants watching every sheikh, every amulet-giving holy man from the most effective to the most dishonest, and all the priests who do the same kind of thing from their monasteries. He sends them spies disguised as supplicants and disciples, and even as mystics. And he extracts information from their real acolytes too.”

“Where is Sheikh Hamdullah’s lodge? I would like to see that neighborhood too.”

“If you go there, there is bound to be gossip,” said the clerk. “The sheikh does not venture out much anyway.”

“Gossip is the least of our worries now,” said Bonkowski Pasha. “The plague has definitely arrived in your city, and it is imperative that everybody should know this.”

Bonkowski Pasha and Doctor Ilias personally delivered the samples they had extracted that day to the Messageries Maritimes Smyrna-bound Baghdad and sent two telegrams to Smyrna as well. Bonkowski Pasha requested an urgent meeting with Governor Sami Pasha that same afternoon, but it was around the time for evening prayers when he finally knocked on the door of the Governor’s Office.

“We had given the Sultan our word that we would keep your visit here a secret!” said Governor Sami Pasha, his manner suggesting how regrettable it was that this promise had not been kept.

“Secrecy would have been important if the unsubstantiated rumors spreading through the Sultan’s twenty-ninth province had turned out to be untrue. That would have revealed this to be a political matter, and it would have been important, in that case, to prevent the spread of false information. Unfortunately, as we have observed today, the plague has spread widely here. We are certain that the disease that has struck the island of Mingheria is the same as the one observed in Smyrna, in China, and in India.”

“But the Baghdad has only just set sail for Smyrna with the samples you extracted.”

“Your Excellency,” said Bonkowski Pasha, “tomorrow they will send us a telegram from Smyrna with the official results. But I can tell you now, in my capacity as the Sultan’s Chief Inspector of Public Health and former Royal Chemist, accompanied here by the brightest among my doctors, and backed by forty years of experience in the field of epidemic disease, that this is plague. There is no room for hesitation in this matter. I wonder if you recall our encounter in Dedeağaç Province? It was when you were governor there, twenty years or so ago, just before the war with Russia. And that was only a bout of summer diarrhea, or perhaps a little outbreak of cholera!”

“How could I forget?” said Governor Sami Pasha. “Thanks to our sultan’s resourcefulness and your prodigious efforts we acted without delay and the city was saved. The people of Dedeağaç remain grateful to you to this day.”

“You must immediately gather the press and have them declare that there is plague in the city, and that quarantine measures will be announced tomorrow.”

“It will take time for the Quarantine Committee to convene,” said the Governor Pasha.

“Do not wait for the results from the laboratory in Smyrna; send notice now that quarantine will be declared,” said Bonkowski Pasha.

CHAPTER 7

But the next morning the Mingherian Quarantine Committee did not manage to gather. The Muslim delegates were ready, but the French consul was away in Crete, Doctor Nikos—chairman of the committee—wasn’t home, and the British consul, whom the Pasha considered a friend, asked to be excused on some unexpected pretext. The Governor Pasha summoned Bonkowski Pasha from the shabby guesthouse where he was being kept with sentinels guarding the door. “While we wait for the Quarantine Committee to convene, I thought you might wish to see your pharmacist friend from Istanbul, Nikiforos—your old business partner,” he continued.