第 9 页

“The outbreak has spread because it was kept secret,” said Bonkowski Pasha.

“Things will take a sudden turn for the worse, just like when the rats died,” said Nikiforos.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“I know that we are standing on the verge of a tremendous catastrophe … But because I cannot quite picture it, I keep telling myself I must be mistaken, and then, my dear friend, I find I cannot bring myself to think about it any longer. What really scares me is that the Governor Pasha has spent so long pandering to these worthless sects and their spoiled, ignorant leaders that they won’t let him implement a proper quarantine. These third-rate sheikhs with their prayer sheets and amulets will do everything in their power to water down the quarantine.”

Bonkowski Pasha brought out the amulet in his pocket. “I found this on the dead prison guard!” he said. “Don’t worry, I made sure to disinfect it.”

“Now tell me something, my dear Stanislaw,” said Pharmacist Nikiforos. “You are bound to know better than anyone else: Is it really true that there have to be rats and fleas around for the plague to spread? Even if there were no rats, could it not be transmitted from person to person? Or, say, from this amulet to me?”

“Even the wisest, most celebrated doctors and quarantine specialists at the Venice Conference last year could not quite say that it cannot be spread through touch or even through saliva and particles in the air. When you cannot be sure of either of those things, your only choice is to resort to traditional isolation and quarantine methods and to start hunting rats. There is still no vaccine against this awful curse. The British and the French are looking for one; we will see what comes of that.”

“Then may the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary help us all!” said the pharmacist.

The church bells began to ring for noon. “Do you have any rat poison?” asked Bonkowski Pasha. “What do people use on the island? Ratsbane, perhaps?”

“Our pharmacies stock cyanide-based products from Smyrna’s Great Britain and Aristoteles Pharmacies. They are not too expensive. A single box can last you seven or eight weeks. People here used to buy their ratsbane and their arsenic from the herbalist to get rid of mice in their homes. You could also use the solution that has just been sent to the Pelagos Pharmacy from Greece on the latest Pantaleon ferry, or the one that has arrived from Thessaloniki for the Dafni store. That one’s got more phosphorus in it. But you are the chemist; you’ll know more about poisons than I do.”

The two old friends exchanged a deep, mysterious look. In that moment Bonkowski Pasha felt as if he had grown distant from this friend from his youth, and more attached to Abdul Hamid and the Ottoman Empire, though readers of the Princess’s letters will know that this was not entirely true. Even so, Bonkowski couldn’t understand Nikiforos’s emotions; he could not accept that Nikiforos had broken with Abdul Hamid and Istanbul completely.

“When the rats first struck, then began to die of their own accord, nobody had any interest in mousetraps and rat poison,” Nikiforos continued. “But now, with this talk of a plague and these stories of people hunting rats in Smyrna, the wealthy Greek Yanboidakis family’s daughter-in-law has bought herself two mousetraps imported from Thessaloniki. And the Frangiskos’ gardener bought one of our carpenter Hristo’s spring-loaded traps.”

“You must tell Hristo to make as many mousetraps as he can!” said Bonkowski Pasha. “How long would it take to have some more brought over from Crete or Smyrna?”

“Ever since these quarantine rumors first started, there have been fewer scheduled ferries and more unscheduled ones than usual. Some wealthier families who usually come for the summer have already fled, worried they wouldn’t be able to leave once quarantine starts. Some haven’t even come this year. It would take a day for rat poison to get here from Crete, and two days from Smyrna.”

“As a pharmacist, you must surely see that soon everybody will be infected, the hospitals will run out of beds, and there won’t be enough doctors to deal with the sick nor enough undertakers to bury the dead.”

“But in Smyrna you defeated the disease quickly and easily.”

“In Smyrna, we got the owner of the city’s biggest pharmacy, the Greek Lazarides, and the owner of the Muslim Şifa Pharmacy to sit together in the same room, and instead of blaming each other for what was happening, they rolled up their sleeves and set about fighting this scourge. Tell me, are there any supplies on the island that might serve to make disinfectant solution?”

“In the garrison they have a lime kiln where they make their own solution. The municipality imports barrels of disinfectant from Istanbul and Smyrna, while some of the hotels and restaurants source theirs from Nikolas Aghapides’s pharmacy in Istanbul. The smell of lavender in certain hotels and restaurants might give the impression that the place has been disinfected, that it is clean, but I do wonder whether the concentration of alcohol in these solutions is high enough to kill the plague microbe, and whether these scented disinfectants really achieve the desired results. Mitsos, the owner of the Pelagos Pharmacy, is also a member of the Quarantine Committee and will often loosen quarantine measures on hotels that buy his solution at a favorable price.”

“Do you carry copper sulfate?”

“They call that blue vitriol, here … If my esteemed friend can wait a day, I should be able to source enough from the other pharmacies to make some disinfectant solution. But the nature of quarantine politics on this island is such that I do not think we will be able to procure a steady supply.”

CHAPTER 8

Bonkowski Pasha was impressed by Pharmacist Nikiforos’s exhaustive knowledge of which substances were currently available on the island of Mingheria, and precisely where they could be found. “You too must join the Quarantine Committee, not just Pharmacist Mitsos,” he said.

“You honor me with your offer, dear Pasha,” said Nikiforos. “I love Mingheria. But I will not put up with those consuls who are only good for selling ferry tickets, smuggling contraband, and finding new ways of outwitting each other. Of course none of them are actual consuls; they are all vice-consuls. In any case it will be difficult to make any quarantine work as long as His Excellency the Governor continues to protect those sheikhs.”

“Which of the sheikhs is the most fervent opponent of quarantine?”

“Us Greeks would never seek to meddle in the religious affairs of the Muslim community. But you must understand, this island is just like a boat, and we are all on it together. The arrows of the plague make no distinction between Muslims and Christians. If Muslims break quarantine, it is not just they who will die, but Christians too.”

Bonkowski Pasha stood up from his chair to signal that the time had come for them to leave and began scrutinizing the glass cabinets in which the pharmacy’s rosewater products were displayed.

“Our two most popular creations remain La Rose du Minguère and La Rose du Levant,” said Nikiforos. He opened the cabinet and handed Bonkowski Pasha a small, shapely bottle of one and a medium-sized jar of the other.

“La Rose du Minguère is our rose-scented hand lotion, and La Rose du Levant is our finest rosewater. We came up with those names together one night in Istanbul more than twenty years ago. Do you remember, Pasha?”

Bonkowski Pasha did remember that night in Istanbul, and smiled wistfully at the memory. With the Sultan’s royal concession suddenly and unexpectedly in hand, the two young pharmacists had sat in the back room of Nikiforos’s shop in Karaköy drinking rakı and dreaming of the riches that would soon be theirs. First they would bottle Mingheria’s special rosewater; then they would use it to make hand creams. The 1880s were the golden age of the kinds of concoctions referred to in Europe as spécialités pharmaceutiques. Traditional herbalists’ shops with their profusion of scents and colors had fallen out of favor, and suddenly the market had come to be dominated by pharmacies with their walls painted white and their windows framed with timber, where people had their medicines made for them by prescription. These pharmacies had soon begun to import goods from abroad—stylish bottles of ready-made callus ointments and stomachache remedies, beard and hair dyes, toothpastes, and antiseptic creams. Some pharmacies in Istanbul and Smyrna even sold eaux de toilettes and purgatives from Europe. It was around this time that certain cannier pharmacists had begun to make their own domestic versions of these products. Even Bonkowski Bey had set up his own company for manufacturing “laxative sodas” and “carbonated fruit juice.” That was when he discovered that the bottles, the lids, the luxurious boxes, and the fancy labels that many of these “locally made” medicinal drinks and preparations came with were often made in Europe—usually in Paris. In Paris, they charged you for the design they put on the label too. So Bonkowski had enlisted his painter friend Osgan Kalemciyan instead.

“Your friend Osgan drew this for our rosewater bottles. We haven’t changed it since. When we started out, we got the only printer in Arkaz who specializes in labels and business cards to print a thousand copies, and we stuck them onto our bottled rosewater.”

“Osgan was not only a pharmacist and chemist but also the most sought-after advertising artist of his time,” said Bonkowski Pasha. “He made posters for all the best-known hotels and several famous shops—including Lazzaro Franco’s—and of course drew catalog pictures and designed packaging for pharmacies.”

“Come and look at this!” said Nikiforos, and having led Bonkowski Pasha to one side, he lowered his voice to say: “The most fervent enemy of quarantine measures, the one that the Governor Pasha must really watch out for, is the sheikh of the Rifai sect. Sheikh Hamdullah secretly supports him too.”

“Where are their lodges?”

“Go to the Vavla and Germe neighborhoods. Do you recall this symbol we used for the Rose of the Levant? A more figurative design. You will notice traces of the Castle’s characteristic spired towers, of the White Mountain, and of the Mingherian rose.”

“Yes, I remember this one, too!” said Bonkowski Pasha.

“I will send some samples of our products in the landau for His Excellency the Governor,” said Nikiforos, gesturing at the two bottles of Rose du Levant he had put into a basket. “I once had the design on these bottles stitched onto a cloth to hang up in the window as an advertisement, but sadly the Governor, mistaking my intentions, had the banner confiscated and has still not given it back. I will join the Quarantine Committee on the condition that my piece of cloth is returned to me. It is an important part of the history of our company.”

Half an hour later, having insisted upon a meeting with Governor Sami Pasha, Bonkowski Pasha entered the Governor’s Office and immediately conveyed Nikiforos’s request: “My old friend Pharmacist Nikiforos has agreed to join the Quarantine Committee,” he began, “but on one condition: that we give him back his advertising banner.”

“He told you about that, did he? The audacity! That Nikiforos is a vile, ungrateful little man. He has earned a fortune from his rose farms, his pharmacy, and his rosewater, and all because of the royal charter the Sultan granted him. Yet no sooner had he made his money than he turned his back on His Royal Highness and started sidling up to the Greek consul and the trade minister. If I wanted to, I could set the tax inspectors on him, issue him with a few fines and tax bills, and watch his rosewater palaces come crashing down over his head.”

“You mustn’t do that, Your Excellency!” said Bonkowski Pasha with an air of humble deference. “Quarantine is a labor of unity and collaboration. It was hard enough to persuade him to join the Quarantine Committee.”

The Governor Pasha walked through a green door to a small room next to his office, opened a trunk, and took out a pink-tinged Mingherian red cloth, unfurling it like a sheet.

“Look! You can see how this could easily be construed as a flag.”

“I understand your concern, Your Excellency, but this is not a flag; it is a label Nikiforos and I designed many years ago to advertise the products of the pharmaceutical company we set up together. It is like a badge to affix on bottles!” said Bonkowski Pasha. “Your Excellency,” he quickly added, “please have the Telegraph Office check again!” He had not been trying to change the subject; he just could not believe that there still hadn’t been a telegram from Smyrna. Later, Bonkowski Pasha and his assistant walked back to the disused guesthouse where they were staying. When they arrived, Doctor Ilias once again urged the impatient Bonkowski not to venture to the Telegraph Office alone.

“What exactly is the danger? Why would anyone here want there to be an outbreak of plague? This island is just like everywhere else; when the plague strikes, all its warring factions will immediately set their quarrels aside.”

“There will be those who come after you only for the glory, Your Excellency. You will remember what happened in Adrianople, where you toiled for a month to end that outbreak of cholera. Yet even as you were preparing to leave the city, some individuals were still claiming that you had been the one to bring the disease to Adrianople to begin with.”

“But this is a warm, green, and thriving land!” said Bonkowski Pasha. “People are gentler here, just as their climate is.”

When there was still no word from the Governor’s Office on the expected telegrams, the Ottoman Empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health and his doctor assistant slipped quietly out of the guesthouse. By the time the sentries and guards stationed at the door had caught up with them, the two men had already reached the State Hall Square. The sky above the square on that hot spring afternoon was clear. The lively, gleaming views of the magnificent Castle to their left and the sheer, mythical rock face of the White Mountain to their right stirred Bonkowski Pasha’s spirit. They walked in the shade of the colonnades around the State Hall Square. The Post Office and the chic fabric store Dafni had each stationed someone at their door to spray disinfectant solution over visitors. There was no other sign that there was a plague in the city. The horses harnessed to the carriages around the square dozed on their feet, and the coachmen chattered cheerfully among one another as they waited for customers.

As they entered the Post Office, a clerk at the door sprayed them with rose-scented Lysol. Bonkowski Pasha looked around and picked out an elderly telegraph operator who was busy counting something, dipping his fingers in vinegar every now and then.

“The telegram you were expecting has arrived, and so have those addressed to the Mingherian Quarantine Committee!” said the clerk before returning to his counting.

Anxious for news, Bonkowski Pasha had also sent Smyrna’s Quarantine Chief a personal telegram inquiring after the test results. So it was that he “officially” learned that there was an outbreak of plague on the island, just as he had already surmised.