Before he could say a word, Feride began to cry. “I’m sorry, Kamil. Since Baba’s death, I just keep waiting for the next blow. Last week, I wouldn’t let the governess take Alev and Yasemin to the park. I had a vision of one of them falling out of the carriage and being crushed by the wheels. Now there’s Elif and Avi and I’m afraid something will happen to them too.”
Kamil moved to the sofa and put his arm around her. He was now very worried about how she would take the news about Saba. He wasn’t sure what to make of it himself and had hoped to discuss it with Feride, but that might be impossible considering the state she was in.
“Ferosh,” he said softly. “Nothing that happened was your fault. I wish you’d accept that. I told you, if you want to blame someone, blame me. It was my suggestion to reduce Baba’s opium. But remember, he had stopped eating. We were trying to save his life.”
“But we killed him.”
Soon after Feride cut her father’s opium supply, he had walked off a balcony to his death. Witnesses reported that he had been smiling. Kamil knew with certainty that his father had been walking toward his wife, the woman whose absence and then death he could never accept and whose image he conjured up in his opium dreams. Now Kamil added a new scenario, that his father had also taken to opium out of guilt.
After their father’s death, a sadness had settled on Feride. He knew she had always been lonely, despite her large household and a constant bustle of teas and social visits. She used to press Kamil to get married, begging him to give her a sister-in-law, a companion, but had lost interest even in that. She seemed to have no dreams left, he thought, as he held her hand. He handed her a clean handkerchief from his pocket and passed his forefinger across her brow.
She pressed the linen against her face, then placed it on the sofa beside her, calmer now. “How do you stand it?” she asked Kamil, trying to laugh. “Your sister is a lunatic.”
“Not at all. My sister is as lovely as the moon. And sometimes as enigmatic.”
“Where did you learn to draw butter like that?” she teased him, but he could tell she was pleased.
“So what was it you wanted to tell me?”
Kamil hesitated.
“I promise not to collapse, cry out, or otherwise cause a scene. Seriously, I’m fine, brother dear.” She pressed his hand. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Kamil decided it would be better to tell her now, rather than risk having her find out some other way. He took a deep breath and asked, “Feride, do you remember when Mama took us to Beshiktash?” Kamil still lived in the small villa his mother had inherited and in which she and her children had spent their mother’s last years.
“A little. I was only eleven. You were older. Why?”
“Do you know why Mama moved there?”
“Living in the governor’s mansion was too much for her. There were always dozens of women trying to see her or inviting her over. I don’t think they cared about her at all. They just wanted to use her to influence Baba. I saw her crying a few times. I remember that very clearly.”
“Do you think Mama and Baba were happy?”
“Of course,” she exclaimed. “Baba started on the opium after she moved to Beshiktash, remember? And after she died, he was inconsolable. He loved her. That’s what killed him in the end.”
They let that conclusion settle between them. Feride gave Kamil a small smile and blinked back tears.
Then Kamil asked, “Yes, but did she love him?”
Feride looked puzzled. “Of course she did.” But she sounded unsure. “What are you saying?”
“It’s possible that Baba had a mistress.” Kamil braced himself for Feride’s response.
She was silent for a moment, her face unreadable. Then, to his surprise, she said simply, “I suppose that’s possible. Most men have them. You know, there’s a saying, ‘If your husband has two coffee cups, break one.’ As soon as a man has enough money, he buys a mistress. In the old days, it was a second wife or a concubine. I suppose having a mistress is more modern.” She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then looked up again. “Do you think that’s why Mama left?”
Kamil wondered whether Huseyin had a mistress. “Yes,” he said. “And she has a daughter.”
Feride sat up straight. “You think it’s Baba’s child?”
“I’m not sure. I think she might be.”
“How old is she?”
“Eighteen. So she would have been born around the time we moved. Her name is Saba.”
“That’s a strange name.”
“It’s an Abyssinian name.”
Feride was silent for a moment. “Mama had an Abyssinian slave at the governor’s mansion. Do you think it was her? She was very beautiful.”
“The woman’s name is Balkis. I met her brother, Malik, a couple of years ago. He was a good man. He was killed two nights ago.”
“I’m sorry, Kamil. Was he a friend?”
“Yes,” Kamil allowed himself to grieve for a moment, as much for his friend as for his friendship. “But he never said anything about this to me.”
“So maybe it isn’t true.”
“I don’t know. He came to my house that night. He wanted me to find an object that had been stolen from him and that he wanted his niece Saba to have. He seemed to want to tell me something else, but decided to put it off. We were supposed to have breakfast together the next day and he was going to invite Saba. It’s possible that this is what he wanted to tell me. When he left that night, he asked me to take care of her and gave me a letter to give her in case something happened to him.”
He pulled out Malik’s letter and handed it to her.
“I gave it to her this morning. From her reaction, I’m sure she didn’t know. Her mother told me the whole story, but I didn’t believe her.”
He waited while Feride read. It occurred to Kamil that Malik had sought him out and befriended him not because he had any interest in orchids, but in order to judge his character. He thought Malik had been his friend. Instead, he realized with a shock, he had been a relation.
When Feride finished, her face was white. “Can I keep this?”
“There’s some information in there that I need. But there’s no rush to return the letter. I’ll bring it back to you. Are you going to show Huseyin?”
“Of course. And Elif.”
Kamil realized that next to Elif’s arrival, this was the most exciting thing that had happened to Feride in a long while.
“What did the mother…”
“Balkis.”
“What else did Balkis tell you?”
“She said she met Baba as he was coming out of the Mosque of Sultan Selim.”
Surprised, Feride asked, “What was Baba doing in a mosque?”
“I don’t know, Ferosh. It was probably part of his official duties.”
“Did Baba know about the child?”
“I don’t know. Balkis said she didn’t tell him.”
Feride considered this. “I think he must have learned about it, don’t you?”
They sat for a few moments without speaking.
“Do we want to acknowledge the girl?” Kamil asked finally. It seemed the decent thing to ask Feride, although what he desperately wanted to know instead was whether his parents had been happy and why his father had taken up with Balkis. He couldn’t imagine his father with her. It was another man, another father he didn’t recognize. He felt grief, as if he were losing his father all over again.
“Is there any proof of this story?” he heard Feride ask.
“I don’t think so. But there is a resemblance.” He remembered Saba’s eyes, so like his own.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She looks like you.”
“Do you think she’ll want an inheritance?”
“She’s illegitimate, so she has no legal right.”
“There’s law,” Feride pointed out, “and there’s justice. We’d need some kind of proof, though.”
Last night’s nightmare came back to him with the force of a hallucination. He could see the feather on the woman’s back. He fought the images by trying to picture his mother’s face, but found the memory of her pulsing faintly in and out of focus, displaced by the stronger impression of Elif’s small golden head.