The Oracle of Stamboul (22 page)

“Who are those women?” Eleonora asked. “Are they the Sultan’s musicians?”

“You could say that,” said Abdulhamid’s mother, looking back over her shoulder to hide a smile. “Music is a common pursuit among those who live in the harem.”

“They live here?” Eleonora asked. “All of them?”

“Yes,” the Sultan’s mother replied. “All of them live here.”

“Where are their parents?”

The Sultan’s mother paused, as if she had never really considered this question.

“They are mostly orphans,” she said finally. “Those with parents were sent here to improve their status. I was once a young
odalisque myself, you know, in the court of Ahmed IV, Abdul hamid’s father. It’s a rather charmed life.”

“Were you an orphan?”

“Yes,” the woman said eventually. “I lost both my parents at a young age, just like you.”

Eleonora wanted to ask more questions, about the palace, and the odalisques, and the music they were playing, but she was enveloped at that moment by an irresistible fatigue.

Later that afternoon, Eleonora was transported back to the Bey’s house. She spent most of the following week in bed, resting. Drapes pulled shut and covers cinched up around her chin, she ate toast dipped in tea and drank such quantities of pomegranate juice that her teeth took on a purple hue around the edges. She was not sick, nor was she injured. As she explained to the Bey, to Mrs. Damakan, and to the interminable stream of doctors sent by the palace, she had merely lost her strength. It was, she told them, as if she had been tapped somewhere close to the core of her being and all the strength had drained out of her. The doctors had other, more scientific theories, ranging from epilepsy to meningitis to sugar sickness, but none of them could say for sure. And it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was that afflicted her, she was on the mend.

Meanwhile, Stamboul was humming with gossip. Even as the imperial carriage brought Eleonora back across the Galata Bridge, the story of her episode seeped out under the palace gates and rolled down the hill toward the heart of the city. If you listened carefully, you could almost hear it, that unmistakable sound of gossip. Like a swarm of locusts, it descended from on high and, buzzing, progressed from house to house. Borne lightly on the breath of its hosts, it mutated as it spread.

Eleonora had done nothing wrong, nothing untoward or im
moral. As such, it was not a full-blown scandal. Still, one could not deny that it was an interesting story. Despite Stamboul being a city of 2 million souls, scores of neighborhoods, and dozens of languages, gossip traveled as quickly as through the square of a small village. By the time Eleonora climbed into her warm, white bed and slipped off to sleep, the rumor had already broken into two competing strains.

The first branch, which held that Eleonora was a seer or prophet of some sort, spread along the banks of the Bosporus, stopping in at the summer houses of the rich on its way to the Princes’ Islands. The story stewed on the islands for a few days, paying visits at all the right galas and dinner parties, before making its way back to Stamboul proper on the backs of returning servants. The second branch, which purported that Eleonora was a British spy sent to disrupt the Ottoman-German alliance, made its way straight across the Galata Bridge and up the hill to Pera, where the foreign communities whispered it among themselves. Glancing over their shoulders occasionally to be sure that no other spies were listening, they relayed the story of the young orphan, a charge of Moncef Barcous Bey, who was agitating against the Kaiser.

Inside the palace, the first version dominated and was bolstered by firsthand accounts of Eleonora’s dramatic seizure in the audience chamber. Certain factions in the government, however, including the Grand Vizier, held on to and repeated the second branch of the gossip, insistent that Eleonora was a foreign agent or at least a puppet exploited by Moncef Barcous Bey. What the Sultan himself thought was a mystery, though over the next few weeks it became clear that he had taken Eleonora’s advice very much to heart.

A steady dribble and tap of rain persisted to the edge of morning, rinsing the dust off the red tile roofs of Robert’s College and restoring some luster to its foliage. Even with the windows shut, the Reverend’s study smelled of damp earth and pollen, the same smell as the dandelion field behind St. Ignatius. The Reverend bit the tip of his pen and clacked it between his teeth, allowing himself a brief reverie. The gutters babbled and the light that fell from the stained glass window above his desk had a rinsed-out quality, as if it, too, were submerged. As exquisite as the light was, however, one needed to concentrate on the task at hand. Laying his palms flat on either side of the letter in front of him, he read over what he had written so far.

Capping his pen, the Reverend rambled across his study to the fireplace. The correct word was “delay,” not “absence,” but he was in no mood to start the letter over again. When it came down to brass tacks, he didn’t care what Donald Stork thought of his epistolary style—or much of anything else, for that matter. Why their correspondence had continued for so long was a question of obsequiousness and courtesy rather than friendship.
The Reverend was certainly not interested in Donald’s exploits on Wall Street, nor did he care much about the parties he and his wife attended. To be fair, James could not imagine Donald had much interest in the intricacies of Stamboul society or the steady development of Robert’s College. He probably would have found some curiosity in the city’s covert underbelly, but even James knew better than to post such sensitive information in a letter. Leaning against the cool stone of the mantel, Reverend Muehler noticed his aspidistra was drooping. He reminded himself that he must talk to Mrs. Eskioglu about the proper manner of looking after houseplants. Even as he made this mental note, he knew it would be lost in the shuffle of tasks that needed attending to before his dinner that evening with Fredrick.

Fredrick Sutton. Of all his friends from Yale College, Fredrick was among the last James would have expected to pay him a visit. Not that they hadn’t been close. Both being sons of working families, he and Fredrick had always had a certain inescapable mixture of affinity and rivalry. The tides of life, however, had drawn them in nearly opposite directions: Reverend Muehler to the cloth and Fredrick to the grubby toil of journalism. In addition to this professional divergence, Fredrick had never been much of a letter-writer. They had exchanged postcards for a few years after graduation, but these updates soon wilted to nothing. He continued to hear Fredrick’s news from other, more conscientious friends. He knew about the promotions, the affairs, the move to New York, but he had not received word from the man himself in at least two years. Until a month ago, that is, when he found a yellow telegram on his desk with the following message:
Coming to Stamboul on the second of August. Holland America lines. See you then my friend. Fredrick Sutton.

In spite of the perfectly comfortable guest quarters available
at Robert’s College, Fredrick had insisted on staying at the Pera Palace. James was somewhat hurt by his friend’s decision to stay at a hotel, but in the end it was probably for the best. He had a great deal of work to accomplish in the next two weeks, and the last thing he needed was a houseguest to entertain. Just that afternoon, he wanted to finish his letter to Donald Stork, prepare the outline of his report to the American Consul, and go over the final draft of his article on the varied manifestations of childhood genius. Before submerging himself again in his work, however, he thought it would be best to take a short walk, to clear his head.

Outside, the air was heavy with evaporation and the sun bled through a shelf of swiftly moving cirrus. The trees hung with soggy moss, and just outside his study a group of first-formers were playing some sort of circular game with a ball. The simplicity of childhood, he thought, could only be appreciated from a distance. He raised a hand to the students in greeting as he crossed the main yard to his favorite contemplation spot, a wooden bench overlooking the Bosporus. It appeared that the storm had cleared all the way to Princes’ Islands, where a school of ships scuttled out from under a low curtain of thunder clouds. He shielded his eyes from what sun there was and squinted. Perhaps one of those was Fredrick’s. One never knew. One never knew which ship was which until they came out from under the glare of the sun.

Following an hour or so of meandering contemplation, the Reverend rose with a clear head and a newfound determination to accomplish whatever needed accomplishing. He was walking along the narrow path between the chapel and his study, drafting the next section of his letter to Donald Stork, when a student waylaid him. A slight, squirlish child he had engaged months
before to keep a watch on Eleonora’s movements, the boy was panting and his collar was stained with perspiration. He took a moment to catch his breath.

“Have you heard?” he said. “Sir, have you heard the news?”

The Reverend nodded absently, giving the child leave to continue.

“Miss Cohen,” the boy said. “She was at the Sultan’s palace yesterday and she fainted. She was shaking on the ground and speaking in tongues.”

“My child,” said the Reverend, in his most admonishing voice. “Think about what you are saying. Shaking on the ground? Speaking in tongues? This is very difficult for me to believe. Tell me where you heard this.”

“Everybody’s talking about it, sir.”

The Reverend crouched down to the boy’s eye level and laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

“Who is everybody?”

“I heard it yesterday from my brother,” said the child, wiping the perspiration from his upper lip. “Then we heard it again at the café. And my mother said she heard it from her friend whose husband’s brother works in the palace.”

“Is that all you heard, my child?”

The boy nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. You may go.”

Reverend Muehler watched the boy run off along the path. This was certainly an interesting development. Rubbing his temples, he tried to imagine Miss Cohen shaking on the ground and speaking in tongues. It was an odd picture, but not altogether impossible. He had seen much stranger things, to be sure. And,
now that he considered the possibility, the idea that she might be afflicted with a neurological disorder, epilepsy or perhaps encephalitis, made perfect sense. Such a condition would explain the shaking and the speaking in tongues. If researched further, it might also be able to explain her mnemonic abilities. That said, one had to take what one heard in this city with a spoonful of salt. The Reverend had learned this lesson the hard way, having more than once given spurious information to his handlers. He would need a towering spoonful of salt and independent verification before he could pass along this piece of intelligence. Tightening his belt, he looked around. He had forgotten exactly where it was he was going, which was just as well, as it was getting on along toward dinner.

After changing out of his habit, James took a carriage to Le Petit Champs du Mort and walked down the boulevard to the Pera Palace Hotel. A grand rococo structure in the French style, it was painted pale yellow and embellished with a number of somewhat eccentric oriental flourishes. He found Fredrick in the lobby, surrounded by a party of German travelers who, from the looks of them, had just returned from an afternoon excursion.

“Four feet long,” said Fredrick, marking the distance with his hands. “And thick as my arm. It was the largest snake I’ve ever seen. And when I came upon him he was wrapped around a camel’s neck like a collar.”

“You’ve been to the Fortune-tellers’ Quarter?” one of the travelers asked in a heavy British accent. “Our dragoman, Elias here, he took us yesterday.”

“First place I went,” said Fredrick and he winked at the old dragoman. “Right off the boat. I told the stevedores to take my trunks to the Pera, then point me to the Fortune-tellers’ Quarter. My column on it should be in next Sunday’s paper.”

As the Germans nodded approvingly, Fredrick noticed James standing at the outskirts of the conversation.

“Jimmy,” Fredrick cried and rose to embrace him. “It’s been much, much too long, my friend.”

The maître d’ led them through the main dining room of the hotel to a table for two near the entrance of the smoking lounge. It was not the best table in the house by any means, but at an establishment like the Pera Palace, Reverend Muehler and his journalist friend were hardly very important personages. On his way through the dining room, the Reverend had spotted the Baron von Vetz, as well as the new American military attaché and a party of doctors from the Italian Hospital. In any case, the table’s relative obscurity would suit their purposes well. They warmed quickly to each other as they caught up on the past three years and traded gossip about old friends from New Haven. Living in Albany, of course, Fredrick had more gossip to share—the Horners’ separation, Darby’s new book, and Jack’s tussle with the governor—though the Reverend had a few juicy bits of his own. He had kept in close contact with a number of their fellow classmates and, as he had found, people were more apt to divulge their secrets to a distant confidant.

“This is perfect,” said Fredrick when their first course arrived, a simple Turkish salad dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

He leaned back to appraise the dining room with a mixture of arrogance and naiveté.

“It’s the spitting image of a Rivera hotel, but there is a decidedly Oriental lilt too. It would be perfect for my series.”

“Tell me again,” said the Reverend, spearing a piece of cucumber with his fork. “What is this series?”

Fredrick cut a piece of tomato in half and inspected the inte
rior meat, as if it might, in fact, be some strange Oriental vegetable masquerading as a tomato.

“Nothing of particular interest. ‘Sketches from Abroad’ is what the series is called. Essentially, the paper sends a reporter to Europe each year to write on a particular place, rough up some local color, and perhaps dabble in society.”

“I see.”

“It’s a reward really, compensation for the damage done to my nose by the grindstone in Albany. Four years up there in the slush and tumble of the statehouse equals one month of this.”

He gestured grandiloquently at his surroundings.

“I’m starting to think it might be a fair trade.”

“Pera is just the beginning,” said James. “Just a small nibble of Stamboul. The city is full of color if that’s what you want.”

“That is exactly why I requested to be sent here,” said Fredrick. “They fought me on it at first. Didn’t think the readers would want a sketch from Asia. So I told them, first of all, half the city is in Europe. And second, this is exactly what the readers want. They want dervishes and elephants. Just look at Kinglake. Look at the
Arabian Nights
. People want Oriental color.”

The Reverend raised his glass in toast.

“To Oriental color. And old friends. Welcome to Stamboul.”

They clinked and both finished their glasses. A moment later, the waiter arrived with the main course, chicken à la Pera. It was the chef’s specialty: a quarter of a small hen simmered in an orange-olive reduction and topped with sour cherries.

“You have heard of the talking bear?” the Reverend asked after a few bites.

“Of course.”

Reverend Muehler felt the sparks of their old rivalry rise up
in him. Less than a full day in Stamboul, and here was Fredrick posturing as if he knew the city inside and out. He didn’t know the half of it, not a quarter. For a brief moment, James considered divulging to Fredrick the details of his most recent covert activities, if only because he knew it would impress his friend. Soon, however, James thought better of the impulse. He was in a hard enough spot as it was. The last thing he needed was whispering among the foreign press.

“Quite a colorful city,” James said, a bit louder than he had intended. “Stamboul is the capital of color, really. There’s the Fortune-tellers’ Quarter, which you have been to, the Slave Bazaar, the Snake Charmer of Üsküdar. And that’s not even to mention more commonplace attractions like the Grand Bazaar, the Hagia Sophia, the ruins of Troy.”

“Yes,” said Fredrick. “We will need to go to Troy. That is one sketch my editors insisted on. It’s not far from the city, is it?”

“Less than a day’s ride.”

As they finished their main course, a waiter passed by their table with a large bronze pot of Turkish coffee and poured them each a cup.

“It smells marvelous,” said Fredrick, bringing the shot-size cup under his nose. “What is that spice?”

“Cardamom.”

“Cardamom!” Fredrick said triumphantly. “I could write an entire sketch on Turkish coffee.”

Reverend Muehler was silent for a moment. He wanted to astound his friend, to introduce him to part of the city he would never see otherwise.

“You know,” he began, feeling the flush of his wine at the base of his neck, “the snake charmers and fortune-tellers are just for
show. All that’s just for foreigners. If you want some real color, I have a former student—”

“Not to be crass, Jimmy, but I don’t think anyone cares much about your boys.”

“She’s a girl,” said the Reverend, watching his friend over the rim of his aperitif. “Eight years old, and she’s an advisor to the Sultan.”

Fredrick narrowed his eyes.

“I tutored her for a few months, but after a while I had nothing left to teach her. The Sultan heard about her ability with languages and he invited her to the palace. As to what happened at the palace,” the Reverend said, lowering his voice, “there are many stories. It’s difficult to know which is true. This is a city of tall tales, you know, a city of rumors. But I heard from a fairly credible source that she was shaking on the ground and speaking in tongues.”

Fredrick finished his coffee and placed the empty cup upside down, as if one of the waiters might tell his fortune. The Reverend could see his friend’s mind whirring, then a smile broke over Fredrick’s face.