The Abyssinian Proof (27 page)

The Old City also was much more conservative than Beyoglu and the modern suburb of Nishantashou, where Feride lived. Kamil wasn’t entirely sure Elif meant her costume to be an impersonation, it just seemed to be the way she had decided to dress. Turkish women wore trousers, but they were very wide and draped with shape-concealing sweaters, vests, robes, and tunics. In the street, even these were covered by a cloak and veil.

Elif had taken off her hat and was looking out the window. He looked at the back of her small, neat head resting against the back of the seat. He wondered whether his feelings for her were appropriate. A woman who had faced the worst that humankind could offer didn’t need his protection.

He told the driver to let them out at the Nurosmaniye entrance to the bazaar. He had to stop himself from helping her out of the carriage. She hopped nimbly down onto the cobbled lane. As a precaution, Kamil asked his driver to accompany them a short distance behind.

They walked past the Nurosmaniye Mosque and fountain, then ducked through an enormous gate with iron-studded doors. Inside, a great vaulted street, lit by numerous lamps, burrowed down one side of the small city that was the bazaar. This was the gold market and the reflected light was dazzling.

As Kamil had feared, Elif dawdled at the shop windows, her hat drawn low across her forehead. When shopkeepers came out to ask politely if they could assist her, she walked quickly on without responding, only to be captured by the next display.

Kamil stopped and waited for her to catch up. “We’re going to the Inner Bedestan. That’s where they keep the antiques and the rare, precious items. It’s a building within a building that is locked up at night, with its own guards.” He could see the bazaar spinning in her eyes. It was too much, he knew. There were over five hundred shops under one roof. He hurried her up and down the connecting streets until they came to another large iron gate that stood open. Inside, the atmosphere was calmer, the shops smaller, the displays less prosaic. Porcelain vases, mirrors with carved silver backs, Roman coins, sturdy old books in leather covers, illuminated Greek manuscripts, Persian and Ottoman miniatures. Elif gravitated to these, fascinated by the brilliant colors and minute details. There were also some oil paintings.

“I don’t recognize these,” she whispered, “but they’re in the Impressionist style. They’re very good. See that one?” She pointed to one of a woman dressed in white, hand in hand with a child, standing on the side of a grassy hill silhouetted against the sun. They looked like clouds scudding across the landscape.

“I check the shops here regularly for stolen antiquities. This is where they end up if they’re sold locally. I’ll be back in a little while. Will you be alright?”

She nodded without looking away from the painting.

“The driver is nearby if you need anything and I’ll be just around the corner.” He motioned to his driver to keep an eye on her.

Kamil made his regular round of the shopkeepers. They knew the magistrate and why he was there, but they never knew when he would come by. After a while, even the most cautious of them brought their best items out and displayed them, hoping for buyers. Kamil had discovered several important objects here—a fifteenth-century Iznik tile taken from a mosque in Bursa, two icons from a Greek Orthodox church in Albanian Village, and several gold cruci-fixes. The shopkeepers always claimed they didn’t know the objects were stolen and bewailed their lost money when Kamil confiscated them. Only rarely could Kamil work his way through the thicket of middlemen to discover and sometimes even apprehend the actual thief. The bazaar was a closed world whose inhabitants protected each other against outsiders.

“Good day, Serkis,” Kamil greeted the shopkeeper of a tiny store.

“Good day, Magistrate. I hope you are well.” Serkis didn’t look pleased to see Kamil.

Kamil accepted a glass of tea. Serkis stood, ceding the padded bench to Kamil. They exchanged ritual greetings and pleasantries. Finally, Serkis said, “What can I help you with today, Magistrate?”

From where he sat, Kamil could see the contents of the entire shop. The walls were hung with framed illuminated manuscripts and shelves held trays of coins, old jewelry, and silver objects. “I’d be pleased to see whatever you have that’s new.”

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”

Kamil sipped his tea as the most valuable missing antiquities ran through his head, like the diamond-studded chalice and the solid-gold plate still missing from the Fatih Mosque. Instead, he said, “A silver reliquary.”

“Nothing like that has come to me.” Serkis’s face was a mask.

Kamil reflected that the merchant had had a lifetime of experience in hiding his emotions. He waited.

“Perhaps I can interest you in something else? As a small token of my appreciation.” The merchant pulled out a tray of silver jewelry and placed it on the table by Kamil’s elbow. Kamil’s eye was drawn to an intricate and unusual pin.

“What kind of design is this?” he asked the merchant.

“I believe it’s Celtic. Excellent choice, Magistrate. I’ll wrap it for you.”

Kamil felt sure it was Malik’s and a great sadness descended on him, as if it were his friend’s spirit trapped on this profane tray.

“Where did you get it?” He dreaded the answer.

Alerted by Kamil’s tone, Serkis’s hands stopped their practiced dance of laying out paper. “I don’t know where it came from. I bought it two days ago as part of a job lot from another dealer.”

“What else was in the lot?”

“Some manuscripts. Nicely illuminated. I’ve sold those already. There are collectors just waiting for things like that to come on the market.” He gestured with his hand. “I send a message and a few hours later, they’re sold.”

“What else?”

Serkis ducked behind the curtain at the back of the shop and returned a moment later with a ledger. He leafed through it until he found the right page. “Here it is. Three more pins, a silver-backed hairbrush and matching mirror, and a cigarette holder.”

“Let me see them.”

Serkis bent over and pulled open some drawers. Before long all the objects were arrayed on a piece of green baize. Kamil didn’t recognize any of them.

“Is the dealer here in the bazaar?”

“Gomidian on the Street of Mirrormakers.”

“Please invite him here.” It was a command.

Serkis sent an apprentice the few steps to Gomidian’s shop. Almost immediately, a large head, topped by a fez, pushed through Serkis’s door.

“What’s new, what’s not?” Gomidian asked wittily.

Kamil introduced himself and saw Gomidian’s smile disappear. “I’d like to know who sold you this pin.”

The three men were crammed into the store, Kamil sitting on the only seat.

“I don’t remember.” Gomidian’s hair was thick with pomade, and like all of the shopkeepers, he wore trousers and a jacket. He had a thick mustache and a gnarled nose that looked as though it had been broken several times.

Kamil had a sudden urge to break it once more. He crossed his legs and leaned back. “I have plenty of time.”

The men began to sweat. Serkis told the dealer in an agitated whisper, “What does it matter? This is just chicken crap.”

“I have to protect my sources,” Gomidian exclaimed.

Serkis raised his hands in acquiescence. “Of course.”

When Gomidian turned and headed for the door, Kamil rose and blocked his way.

Serkis fluttered about nervously, worried about damage to his shop.

Gomidian shrugged. “A crazy blood from Charshamba named Amir or Amid or something. A virgin. Didn’t have a clue how to negotiate a deal, but loud as a rooster.”

Kamil’s disquiet deepened. He asked for a description, just to be sure, then he dropped the pin into his pocket. He thanked the men, and left the shop. They looked visibly relieved.

Two streets over, he saw Elif, hands in her pockets, head poised over a display of enameled French clocks.

“Shall we go?” he asked distractedly. Seeing the surprise on her face, he felt guilty at rushing her and was relieved when she smiled and nodded.

They returned to the carriage.

Kamil was anxious to tell Omar about the pin and all that it implied, and he wanted to search the Kariye without Elif to distract him.

“Something’s come up,” he told Elif. “I’ll get out at the Fatih police station, but the carriage is yours for the day.” He leaned out and gave the driver instructions.

“Are you still going to the Kariye Mosque?”

“Later this afternoon.”

As the carriage jerked into motion, he reached down and took out a parcel the driver had stowed there.

He handed it to her. “A gift for your new life.”

“May I open it now?”

“As you like.”

She drew out the oil painting of the woman and child in the sun.

“May you be happy,” he said softly.

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

B
ALKIS DRAINED THE
last of the diluted powder from the glass and put it aside. It was her third potion in two hours. She knew it was more than the surgeon allowed her, but the pain was relentless. She knelt heavily on the divan, her body aching with the effort, and reached up to take the monstrance from the shelf. She ran her fingers over the sharp gold tines, letting them linger on the tine black with her mother’s blood. The heart of the monstrance was empty. Balkis pushed her finger into the circular opening where the Christians had suspended the wafer they believed to be the body of Jesus, the man they considered God. This too, she mused, was a Container of the Uncontainable. This too, like the Melisites, like her own body, was based on a lie.

Her body had been consecrated to an empty space that had slowly devoured her. There was the continuing pain that made even her daily ablutions a trial: the pus, the smell, the leaking urine. And more recently, sharp pains in her joints, her abdomen swelling up like a summer gourd. Gudit treated her with herbs, but it was Constantine Courtidis, with his Balat Balm and knowledge of western powders and medicines, who gave her the will to go on. She was too ashamed to reveal herself to the young surgeon, but he treated her nonetheless. She wondered whether Courtidis could take over from Gudit. Perhaps the Melisites should modernize, as Amida wished. In the modern world, no one had secrets anymore. What difference did it make?

She gasped and doubled over as the terrible pain burrowed through her. She lay groaning in a fetal position until the worst had passed, then slowly loosened her cramped limbs. She felt light-headed and was bathed in sweat, too weak to sit up. A barrage of thoughts pummeled her, drawing in their wake anger, fear, regret. Feelings she thought she had harnessed and defused over the years returned to run roughshod over her accomplishments. Her pain had cut them loose.

She had made the best of what fate had begrudged her. When she became priestess, she had learned the smuggling business. She was a good leader, discreet, firm, and fair. They had well-trained workers and loyal customers. Her one accomplishment was that under her leadership, the struggling sect had become secure and relatively well off. She had done it on her own, with no help from Malik. Now even that was being undermined by people like Kubalou, and by Amida, who in his foolish arrogance and ambition had brought these thugs and, as a consequence, the police into their community. Saba had told her that after she had refused to make a deal with Kubalou’s representative, Amida had taken him to meet the village men and they had brokered their own deal. The idea that Kubalou would send someone else in his place to negotiate without letting them know was galling. Whenever she thought of the charade of her discussion with the flame-haired imposter, she felt shame. She had been treated disrespectfully and duped, but her son’s perfidy was worst of all.

Her sweet, wide-eyed son whom she had sent to the monastery when he was twelve had come back a hard, compassionless stranger. She tried to remember the milky scent of his little body, slippery like a baby dolphin in the bath. She had licked his delicate chest, tickled him to make him giggle. “I’ll be your bride, won’t I, little lion?” The desire of mothers everywhere. Those years he was gone, she had grieved as if he were dead. Now Amida seemed to despise her. She had even caught herself wondering whether he had killed Malik. Her son had announced his readiness to sell off the one thing that would have given her life meaning, if it truly existed. Without the Proof of God, what was she guarding? Malik claimed to have found it after all these centuries. Was Amida right? Was it nothing more than an empty box? Malik said there were papers inside. What miracle could be contained in a pile of papers? If truth was the enemy of faith, she had neither.

She turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her body heavy and listless, afloat on a sea of pain. She had to remind herself to breathe. What was there left to live for?

Her daughter had become a woman with religious ice in her veins, someone who would make a good priestess, who wouldn’t snap like a weak branch. Yet the girl had fallen apart after learning that Kamil was her brother. Balkis blamed herself for not telling her daughter sooner, and she blamed Malik for bringing them together. How little she had understood her children.

Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes and down her neck. She had always wanted too much. Her own mother had tried to warn her. She had said love is a fig full of worms. When you pull it open, you see delicious flesh studded with seeds. You sink your teeth into the fragrant fruit and when you look again, the seeds are alive with motion. There wasn’t just one snake in the Garden of Eden.

The emptiness inside her seemed truly uncontainable. She lay there, her eyes drawn to the opening in the middle of the monstrance that rested beside her like an uncaring mate. She heaved herself onto one elbow and pulled the monstrance toward her. She pressed the tip of her finger to the sharp tine until it pricked her skin. A tiny bubble of blood welled up. She pushed back her left sleeve, exposing the tender flesh of her wrist. She imagined the pain would be terrible, but purifying. What she didn’t know was whether she’d have the strength.