The Oracle of Stamboul (24 page)

His Excellency Abdulhamid II spread a white cloth napkin across his lap and lowered his nose to the plate of cold roast chicken on the table in front of him. Although he understood well the importance of etiquette, of courtly pomp and protocol, the constant attention to procedure sometimes grew tiresome. Sometimes His Excellency wanted nothing more than to eat an entire plate of cold roast chicken with his hands, to tear it limb from limb. And that was precisely what he intended to do. He was the Sultan after all. Grinning to himself at the perfect luxury of such a crude meal, he ripped the poor bird’s leg from its body and sunk his teeth through the flesh. The chicken had been roasted in the Aegean style and finished with a syrupy walnut paste. Even cold, its skin crackled. After sucking the leg bare, Abdulhamid used a piece of flat bread to pull the meat off the breasts and back and underside.

When he was finished with the chicken, its carcass lay ravaged on the plate like some wayward harlot. Wiping his hands, he laid his napkin over the empty bones and reclined into his chaise lounge with a glass of mint tea. He allowed himself a brief reverie of an untoward nature before taking up again the second volume of
The Hourglass
. It truly was a wonderful book, filled with twists and turns, romance, pride, and greed. The translation of such great literature was a service to his subjects and an honor to the Turkish language. It was also beneficial to
his own reading pleasure, but that was just a secondary consequence, a providential return on his munificence. Propping the book up against his stomach, Abdulhamid quickly lost himself. Engrossed as he was in the gruesome battle scene near the end of the volume, during which Lieutenant Brashov learns of his brother’s supposed death, the Sultan did not hear the click of the door opening.

“Your Excellency.”

It was the Grand Vizier, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper like a rapier.

“What is it?”

“Your Excellency. I know that you asked not to be disturbed. But I think you would like to see this.”

The Sultan righted himself and, pulling his napkin over an exposed chicken bone, leaned across the table to take the unfurled newspaper from his advisor.

“‘The Oracle of Stamboul,’” he said, glancing at the headline. “What is this? An editorial calling for my resignation? Another cry for religious freedom?”

“Much worse, Your Excellency. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

The Sultan read through the first paragraph, which took him some time as he was not especially practiced in English. Jamaludin Pasha coughed and clasped his hands in front of his body.

“I was particularly upset by the line about your mother,” he said, indicating from a distance. “In the middle of the fourth paragraph.”

The Sultan read aloud:

“‘And she is rumored by some to be in league with the Sultan’s own mother.’”

He punctuated the end of the sentence with a loud staccato laugh.

“Miss Cohen in league with my mother. Against whom? To what end?”

Jamaludin Pasha, however, was not amused. And Abdulhamid knew that he would not be able to get back to his book until this matter was resolved. Taking on an air of gravity, the Sultan folded the newspaper and laid it next to the remains of the recently dismembered chicken.

“I see, of course, why you find this article troubling,” he said. “It is an assault on my fitness to rule. Not to mention the piece about my mother. But what action can we take against a newspaper in New York?”

“We have tracked down the author of the piece. He is staying at the Pera Palace, room 307. If you wish, I can summon him to a meeting at the palace. We can give him a scare, something impressive to write his next installment about, then put him on the next ship back to New York.”

“Yes,” said the Sultan. “Very well.”

“I might also suggest, Your Excellency, that it would be best if you did not meet again with Miss Cohen, in light of these rumors.”

The Sultan closed his eyes and pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

“I thought you might suggest that,” he said. “Please leave the newspaper here. I will peruse it more closely and give you further directions this evening.”

“There is one final piece of information, Your Excellency,” said the Grand Vizier. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, by all means.”

“I have contacted Miss Cohen’s aunt, Ruxandra, who appears to be the only relative of any use. My intention was nothing more than to alert the aunt of her niece’s whereabouts. In the course of our exchange, however, I felt compelled to offer the assistance of the palace should Miss Cohen decide she wants to leave the care of Moncef Bey and return to Constanta.”

The Sultan murmured something to himself and rose from his seat, signifying that the meeting was over.

“As I said, I will give you further instructions this evening.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” said the Grand Vizier, bowing out of the room.

When the door clicked shut, Abdulhamid sat down again and unfolded the newspaper. It was rather an amusing piece, he had to admit, though inaccurate on many accounts and filled with quite damning implications. One could only imagine the rumors such a story would engender, had already engendered. He had just come again to the section about Miss Cohen and his mother when the woman herself burst into his room. Whatever the original intention of her visit, it was derailed by the sight of the article in her son’s hand.

“I do hope that whoever wrote that insinuating slander is going to be punished severely.”

The Sultan folded the paper in half and straightened his back.

“A good day to you too, Mother.”

“Excuse my impertinence, Your Excellency,” she said, bowing. “It’s just that—”

“Not to worry,” he said. “I just now told Jamaludin Pasha to track down the author and punish him accordingly. We thought deportation would be sufficient.”

“Deportation would be sufficient, I suppose, though it will not repair the damage done by this piece of refuse.”

“The question then,” said the Sultan, ruefully sipping the lukewarm sediment at the bottom of his tea glass, “the question to my mind is what action we should take to dispel these rumors.”

“What has Jamaludin Pasha suggested?”

“He is agnostic on the matter.”

“Agnostic?”

“Yes. He said he had no strong opinion.”

This was a lie, of course. His mother knew better than anyone that the Grand Vizier was agnostic about nothing, but she could not directly contradict the Sultan. So she moved forward on a different tack.

“Beyond punishing the author and dealing with the rumors,” she said, “there is also the matter of the girl herself. Something must be done about her. I see no need to punish her. She has done nothing wrong. But until something is done about her, we cannot begin to counteract the rumors.”

“What approach would you suggest, Mother?”

She raised her hand to her neck and stroked its full length, as if considering the question for the first time.

“As I see it, there are two paths we could take. Neither is perfect, but both would serve our purposes well.”

“Yes,” said Abdulhamid, glancing at the swirl of tea leaves and mint at the bottom of his glass. “Go on.”

“The first path,” she said, “is deportation. Send her back to Romania and forget about her. The second path would be to invite her to live here in the palace. We could find a room for her somewhere on the edge of the harem, give her lessons in music and calligraphy. Both solutions have their problems, of course, but they both also have their benefits.”

“Intriguing,” the Sultan said, scratching the back of his head,
just beneath his turban. “I can’t say I have considered the second option, but it is rather intriguing, especially coming from you. Let me think on it.”

Later that afternoon, a train of imperial carriages pulled up to the entrance of the Çemberlitas Baths, and the Sultan disembarked, wearing a light blue silk caftan piped with red and silver. He was followed into the baths by a retinue of barbers, masseuses, towel boys, and assorted other attendants. Six days a week, the complex teemed with the hairy backs of common men, grunting and slathering themselves with soap. On Saturdays, however, Çemberlitas was closed to the public. On Saturdays, Abdulhamid could lie alone in the middle of the main room, watching strands of sunlight fall through the steam. Although the palace possessed a series of magnificent baths, of the finest design and craftsmanship, Çemberlitas was without rival.

Undressing, the Sultan entered the condensation-heavy main room. A gently rising dodecahedron, the ceiling sloped through endlessly repeating tiles to a vaulted glimpse of sunlight. A dozen faucets were arranged around the perimeter of the room, all pointing toward the large, light gray marble slab at the center. It was like a mosque dedicated to the human body. Indeed, as he lay on his back at the center of the marble slab, the sunlight fell perfectly through the steam and he felt in the presence of something greater than himself. After a few minutes of solitude, Abdulhamid summoned his team of attendants, who set to work washing, stretching, and massaging the royal corpus. It was during these cleansing sessions that he did his best thinking. Succored in the presence of God, his senses obscured by steam and a team of hands scrubbing at the husk of his physical body, his mind was free to wander unfamiliar paths, to amble aimlessly
along the highway of logic. It was here that he dreamed up the Hajj Railroad, here that he had resolved so many of the conflicts with the Public Debt Administration, here that he had decided finally how to deal with the Safavids.

On that particular day, the dilemma, of course, was what to do with Miss Cohen. He wasn’t entirely convinced that anything needed to be done about the girl herself, but both his mother and the Grand Vizier had insisted. And he knew that in those rare moments when the two of them agreed, it was worthwhile at least to consider all the available options. The current situation, he could see now, was not tenable. Not that he suspected Moncef Bey of anything more than his reading groups. It was solely a matter of Miss Cohen and her growing reputation. His mother had put it quite well. There were two distinct choices. They could send Miss Cohen back to Constanta, a path that the Grand Vizier seemed to favor, or they could invite her to live in the palace, give her some music lessons or a job in the bureaucracy, and allow her to live out a life of sheltered obscurity. He couldn’t imagine Jamaludin Pasha would be fond of such an arrangement. He was already quite upset about the disintegration of the German alliance, so much so that the Sultan wondered sometimes whether he could faithfully discharge his other duties. That, however, was a question for another day. Inhaling, the Sultan closed his eyes and, following the web of colors the light made on the insides of his eyelids, he focused his attention entirely on the matter of what to do with Eleonora Cohen. When he opened his eyes again, it was clear.

And so it was, amid the steam and ambergris of Çemberlitas, that Abdulhamid decided to invite Eleonora to live at the palace, where she could serve as his personal advisor and answer queries
to her heart’s content. Of all the options available, it was the only one that made good sense. Naturally, her presence in the halls of power would constitute a threat to his other advisors, but they would learn to live with her, just as they had learned to live with each other, and if they couldn’t, they would have to find a more suitable position. He was the Sultan and he could take advice from whomever he chose.

Eleonora’s third visit to the palace was rather different than the previous two, in shape as well as purpose. When the imperial carriage pulled up to the front of the Bey’s house, she was upstairs in her bedroom, dressing herself with the assistance of Mrs. Damakan and contemplating her plans for the day. It had been thundering for much of the morning, and there was a stack of letters on her desk that needed responding to, not to mention the telegram from her aunt Ruxandra, crumpled into a ball next to the stack. Although she was still not quite ready to return to her prior regimen, the thought of reading for pleasure was beginning to appeal to her in a way it hadn’t since her episode. And she thought she might also like to spend some time exploring the Bey’s house. Of course, the arrival of the imperial carriage scuttled these plans. Without a word, Mrs. Damakan buttoned up the back of Eleonora’s dress and they hastened downstairs to the anteroom, where the Sultan’s herald was waiting, his hands clasped at his belt and heel pattering restlessly against the floor.

“Miss Cohen,” he said, bowing at the waist. “His Excellency has requested to see you as soon as you are able.”

“Yes…” She hesitated. “Of course.”

She turned to Mrs. Damakan, then back to the herald.

“May I have a moment to change?”

“You may,” said the herald. “However, I should advise you
that His Excellency indicated he would like to see you as soon as you are able, without concern for clothing or condition.”

Eleonora felt Mrs. Damakan push her gently from behind, and she was out the front door, following the herald across the walk. Without time for another thought, she was in the carriage and on her way. Instead of turning up the hill toward the Gate of Greeting, the carriage followed the curve of the Bosporus around the Golden Horn, past a green copper-topped public fountain, to the northeast corner of the palace. The gate protecting this entrance was much smaller than the Gate of Greeting, but still imposing in its own right. Carved from a single piece of basalt and adorned with star-shaped turquoise tiles, the mouth of the gate resembled an enormous whale opening its jaws to swallow them whole.

Upon disembarking from the carriage, she was approached by a languid young woman, much like those she had observed when she was recovering from her episode in the Sultan’s private quarters. She was quite young, no more than seventeen, though very much a woman in her loose cotton frock. Without a word, she took Eleonora’s hand in her own and kissed the tips of her fingers.

“The Sultan is waiting.”

She had striking green eyes, mined with gold and resting in a heavy nest of lashes. Allowing some time for Eleonora to grow comfortable in her presence, the young woman then turned and led her into the palace proper. They traveled down one path and up another, turning right twice and left once before entering a vaulted hall that smelled of citrus and musk.

“I must leave you,” she said, stopping in front of a tall door flanked by two palace guards. “The Sultan has requested to meet with you alone.”

The guards stepped aside and Eleonora felt the scratchy taste
of bile at the back of her throat. She held on to the young woman’s hand.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”

The young woman regarded Eleonora with a combination of sympathy and affection, as if she were a baby sparrow found wandering alone in the woods.

“Do you know what he, His Excellency, wants to speak with me about?”

“No,” the woman said. “I don’t. But you can be confident that he will treat you well no matter what it is he wants.”

Eleonora tried to think of another question, but none came. And so, the young woman turned to walk back down the hall.

The room Eleonora had been escorted to was known as the Iris Chamber, after a floral design etched into the plaster around its doorway. A small and relatively spartan room, its far wall was taken up mostly by a semicircular blue divan, on which the Sultan was reading. Apart from the divan and a hunchback wooden chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the Iris Chamber was furnished only with a writing desk and a painting of a fox hunt. Eleonora watched the Sultan read for some time before she spoke.

“Is that
The Hourglass
?”

“Yes,” he said, laying his book facedown on the divan. “I cannot thank you enough for recommending it to me.”

“Where are you?”

“The third volume. When you entered I had just come to the scene in which General Krzab calls the remaining members of his family together to berate them and to distribute the fortune he uncovered at the back of his mother’s closet.”

“‘Truth is a slippery fish,’” Eleonora said, quoting General Krzab’s famous line a few pages earlier. “‘Flashing scales in the water and a noble fighter on the line—’”

The Sultan smiled and finished the quotation.

“‘—But dull as lead at the bottom of the boat.’”

As the Sultan spoke, Eleonora realized that she had committed an enormous breach of etiquette. Not only had she addressed him directly, without title or form, she had neglected also to bow upon entering the room. Covering her mouth, she humbled to her knees and touched her head to the floor.

“Please,” said the Sultan.

She turned to look at him, her temple still pressed against the cool tile.

“There is no need. You may sit if you like,” he said, motioning toward the deep wooden chair on his right.

She moved toward the chair cautiously, for fear of violating protocol again, and perched at the edge of its seat. Up close, she noticed, the Sultan’s face was quite similar to that of the Bey, especially about the nose and upper lip. Unlike the Bey’s leafy cigar smell, however, the Sultan’s aroma was lavender and lilac, with a touch of orange.

“I wanted to speak with you in private,” he began. “I have an important question I would like to ask and I want you to answer on your own, without the pressure of the court. Do you feel comfortable answering for yourself? Are you ready to make a very big decision that will affect the rest of your life?”

Eleonora looked down at her shoes, polished and swinging above the ground.

“Yes. I am.”

“Naturally, the decision is entirely up to you, but I pray you keep in mind that the effects of your choice will impact the lives of many.”

He paused to look at her. Her hands were folded in her lap and her face set in an expression of supreme serenity.

“What I want to ask you is whether you would like to live at the palace. You would stay here, in the seraglio—if you like, in this very room. Your days would be spent reading, playing the oud, learning calligraphy, whatever you please, really. Your every want would be provided for. There is nothing you would need to do in return, except occasionally to discuss an issue of state with me or with the Grand Vizier.”

Eleonora unfolded her hands and pushed her fingers back through her hair. It was indeed an enormous question, and it took her somewhat by surprise. There were so many contingencies, so many consequences to consider. She tried to think it through, to work it out, but as she did, she was overcome by a swirling, heavy feeling not unlike the swoon before her episode. She blinked and came back to herself.

“What about the Bey?”

“The Bey? I can only assume that Moncef Bey will continue to live his life just as he did before you arrived.”

“Would he be upset?”

The Sultan seemed somewhat perplexed.

“I can’t say how he would react. I would remind you, however, that this is your decision alone. Although I agree we should consider those around us, it is important to remember your own self-interest.”

She nodded.

“What will happen to me if I decide not to live at the palace?”

“Well,” said the Sultan. “No one can know for sure. But that is a very good question. It shows you understand your situation well.”

He paused, working his mouth about a lozenge of some sort.

“I trust you know that your aunt is on her way to Stamboul.
It is her intention, as I understand it, to bring you back to Constanta. Of course, if you chose to live at the palace we would make alternate arrangements for her.”

As the Sultan spoke about life in the palace and the holdings of the imperial library, Eleonora let her gaze wander to the painting of the fox hunt. Horses and dogs dominated the frame, so much so that it took her a moment to spot the tiny curl of fox at the bottom right, hidden in the hollow of a tree. She realized she had been silent for some time when the Sultan stood.

“May I ask which option you are inclining toward?”

Eleonora was not inclined toward either of these options. What she wanted was to continue her life as it had been before, living quietly with Moncef Bey, Monsieur Karom, and Mrs. Damakan. She understood, however, that this was no longer an option, for a number of reasons. Naturally, one could not voice such thoughts.

“I am inclining toward the palace,” she began. “But, if I may, I would like some time to make my decision.”

“That is fair,” said the Sultan, and he seated himself again on the divan. “It is a major decision and I wouldn’t want you to rush into it. I will send a herald tomorrow morning. If you decide to live here, have your luggage ready. If not, I hope you will do me the courtesy of meeting with me again to discuss your choice.”

“I will.”

The Sultan stood again and saw her to the door. For a moment, standing there at the entrance to the Iris Chamber, they looked at each other: a small girl and a small man on the far side of middle age. Bending at the waist, Abdulhamid took her hand and kissed it.

On the carriage ride back from the palace, Eleonora saw Stamboul in a new light. The waterfront mansions, the old men fish
ing over the side of the Galata Bridge, the thrush of commerce in the markets, even the sea birds tooling overhead, everything was imbued with the scent of possibility. She thought of the line from Lieutenant Brashov’s speech to his brother, just before his death:

With every choice, even the choice of inactivity, we must shut the door to a host of alternate futures. Each step we take along the path of fate represents a narrowing of potential, the death of a parallel world.
The path of fate was really more like a tunnel, and it was constricting about her with every step she took.

Eleonora was not in a particularly voluble mood when she returned home. She had a great deal to think through, and not much time. After she told the Bey about her visit to the palace and the Sultan’s offer, they spent the afternoon ensconced in mutual silence, he paging through the newspapers of the week and she tending to unanswered letters. Among them was a letter from a child in Paris, who wanted to know which books she had studied exactly, and a long complaint from an Italian monk describing the political situation around Siena. She wrote a few responses before losing herself in contemplation of a distant bank of clouds. If only she could focus her mind on her own situation, solve it as she had solved the problems of the Sultan and all the people who wrote asking for her advice. Laying her pen down, Eleonora folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, concentrating her attention on the vicissitudes of the choice in front of her. If only she knew how it all fit together—the Reverend’s puzzle, the young man at the Café Europa, the Bey, the Grand Vizier, the Sultan’s mother—if only she could figure out what it all meant, she thought, she would be able to make the correct choice.

After a long while, she opened her eyes, no closer to the answer. She watched her flock returning home, one by one, each
bird from its own foray into the depths of the city. As the linden tree grew purple with their chattering, Eleonora realized her very question was wrong. She thought of Miss Ionescu’s maxim:
There is no sage wiser than the dictates of your own personal heart
. Then she recalled the lines that followed:
When you follow the ardent instructions of your heart, when you follow not the easy path nor the selfish path, but the path you knew all along was correct, you can only but do what’s right by the world
. The truth was, Eleonora realized, she didn’t want any of it. She didn’t want the Sultan’s protection, nor did she want the Bey’s. She didn’t want Constanta or Ruxandra. She didn’t want Mrs. Damakan’s prophecy and she didn’t want all these people asking her advice. What she wanted, more than anything, was to be alone, without anyone’s plans or expectations, unencumbered and unattached.

After a mostly silent dinner of stewed beef and rice, Eleonora excused herself and trudged upstairs to bed. Setting her candle on the bedside table, she crossed to the bay window. She rested her elbows on the windowsill and gazed out across at the white walls of the palace. The straits sparkled like rock candy, reflecting a fresh string of lights hung between the minarets of the New Mosque. She could see the outlines of ships cutting through the water like so many ghosts, and, in the far distance, she heard the wail of a train brake as it pulled into Sircesi Station. This sound carried with it the outline of a thought, alighting delicately on the windowsill like a sea bird from across the ocean. It appeared at first glance to be just the solution she was looking for, but before she could fully think it through, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

In the light of the doorway, where he remained, the Bey’s features took on a spectral cast.

“I hope I did not wake you,” he said, though it was obvious he had not.

“No,” she said, turning fully now to face him. “Not at all.”

“I wanted to tell you that I will do my best to support you, to advocate for your best interests, regardless of what you decide.”

He was silent for a moment and the candlelight played nervously on his face. Then, reaching into his coat, he removed a small pouch.

“Your father,” he said, holding the pouch in his upturned palm, “left this behind. It was with his luggage.”

He set the pouch on her night table and withdrew into the hall, the sharpness of his features receding into darkness.

“No matter what path you choose, it will serve you well.”

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”