The worst of the bustle fell behind us. We were in a little park, almost a zone of silence, some monument to a dead pasha, and could clearly see the million tiny lights of Stamboul from where we stood. At length I paused and drew her into the shadow of a gnarled, sweet-scented cypress. ‘Are you hungry, Esmé?’
She looked directly up into my eyes. She seemed startled, as if all at once she realised how profound my feelings were, how significant to both our destinies this encounter was. Gravely, she composed her little face. Her expression was candid and serious.
‘Oui.’
SEVEN
TO CONSECRATE MY resurrected ideal, the birth of my Muse whole, as it were, from the head of Poseidon, I required a parental blessing. Next day found myself and my girl descending to Galata’s wretched slums, that world of crippled dogs and myriad degenerate humanity, to visit her mother and father.
Esmé’s name had been Elizaveta Bolascu. After some political trouble, her parents moved to Constantinople in 1909 from Husch near the Bessarabian border. He had been a master carpenter until, Esmé said, ill luck had lost him his trade. Their one-room apartment was at the top, as she proudly told me, of seventy-five unstable stairs. He was, I realised at once, a drunkard, in appearance indistinguishable from the miserable Armenians and Sephardim who infested most of the building. Every vein on his face was broken and inflamed. The smell of cheap alcohol was, however, a blessing, since it disguised the general stink of the place. Esmé’s mother, half mad and apparently without will, wore a black shawl around her head like any peasant woman; her skin was as yellow as her husband’s was red. She said she would make us tea, but Esmé stopped her. ‘My mother is sickly.’
M. Bolascu spoke only his native language and some Turkish. His wife knew a smattering of Russian, but I could barely understand the dialect, and some French. Esmé was thirteen. As they laboured through their miniature vocabularies I wondered where Captain Loukianoff had been in 1907. Had Madame Bolascu ever heard the name? She said it was possibly familiar, but I suspect she thought I was searching for a distant relative’s next of kin. (Esmé was two when they moved from Husch. It was perfectly possible therefore that the girls were half-sisters. To this day I am convinced of it. Loukianoff’s wife had deserted him after only a year of marriage, after Esmé was born. Why should he not have sought consolation, later, in the arms of a Roumanian carpenter’s robust wife?) Madame Bolascu asked if he was a policeman. She spoke in a hesitant, reedy voice, anxious to please. No, I said, he was a Russian officer. A gentleman. Her eyes became blank, as if someone had switched them off. I wondered if this were an indication of guilt. These two had reached the very bottom, although it was evident they had once been respectable. The Turkish capital could have that effect. Something in the air rotted the honest Christian soul. They had been slowly starving to death but now, thanks to Esmé, they were gorged on the cans and preserves she had bought with her body. Strangely, both mother and father were swarthy. I knew Esmé could hardly be the drunken Roumanian’s daughter. Loukianoff had doubtless passed through Husch on his travels to and from Ukraine. I could not remember exactly when he had come to settle in Kiev, but it was after 1907. ‘Loukianoff,’ I whispered to the crone (she was not more than fifty in actuality). Her husband moaned like a sheep and complained it had grown cold. She went to rearrange the sacking at the window, pinning the fabric on rusty nails stuck into bare wood. Esmé lit a candle. Bolascu coughed and brushed at his grimy forehead. He did not want us there.
‘Très bon. Très bon,’ insisted the mother. Even her French had plainly seen better days. She patted her lovely daughter’s head. She tried to grin, but her few yellow teeth plainly hurt her mouth. Neither she nor Esmé was entirely certain why I was there. I tried to explain again. The child reminded me of my murdered sister. I wanted to provide for Esmé’s wellbeing and theirs. Husband and wife nodded at last and became thoughtful. We had reached the bargaining stage.
In the end I paid two English sovereigns for her. Having fairly purchased their blessing, I was now, in their eyes, the sole owner of their child. Her mother assured me she was a good girl, a virgin, a pious Catholic. She kissed her daughter farewell. The father snarled over his money. She said she would come to see them soon. We went back down the swaying stairs to where a nervous cabman waited, feeding his horse from a nosebag. I ordered him to return us to the little sidestreet behind Tokatlian’s. There I had already taken one of Olmejer’s private apartments, rented on a monthly basis. This suite was a red cavern with low, curved ceilings and deep carpets all of the same colour. It was their best. It must be a secret, I told Olmejer, to everyone. I had paid him in advance. The rest of our day was spent with the couturiers who came to dress her in decent clothes, befitting her age. I had her thoroughly washed. Her hair was brushed and tied back with ribbon. At length she resembled an ordinary thirteen-year-old girl again. I left her with her dresses and her mirrors and returned for a while to the Pera Palas. There were no messages for me. I began to believe myself forgotten by Mrs Cornelius. I hoped to see Major Nye in the bar, but he, too, was gone. I was sure the Baroness, on the other hand, would continue patiently to wait a while longer.
A week went by. I ignored Leda’s increasingly imploring notes. Then I let it be known I had been ordered to Scutari. I did not want my idyll interrupted. I was at last in love. It was a rapture of nostalgia, of dreams come true. We visited cinemas, fairgrounds and theatres. We did everything I had always intended to do with Esmé. And now Esmé did not hold back, primly examining the cost or warning me not to lose my head, as she had in Kiev. I was able to enjoy everything to the full and never think once of the future. Love-making was sweet and delicate, unlike anything I had known before, almost in the nature of a happy, childish game, though not without passion. Esmé was greedy for life, reaching for it urgently as one does when one has believed it permanently lost. She was in fact more eager for sexual pleasure than I. I was frequently content merely to lie with her cradled in my arms while I told her little stories, made jokes, fed her with sweets. My whole world had a rosy warmth; I knew the joy of a father reunited with his daughter, brother with sister, husband with wife. She accepted my romantic tenderness as prettily as she accepted all my gifts. I asked for nothing; merely that she be herself, the object of my affection, my little perfect goddess, rescued from vice as I had not been able to rescue her geminus. I remembered to write a few hasty notes to Mrs Cornelius. I told her I was in contact with people who could help us. I informed the Baroness von Ruckstühl I had encountered unexpected difficulties. The official who promised to arrange her visa was now being unhelpful; moreover, relatives of mine had arrived in Constantinople and required some of my time. Day after ecstatic day I put off meeting both women. While I lived in heaven, whole armies were routed, new countries were established, others were completely destroyed or rechristened with unlikely names. The empires of old Europe fell to bits like rotten wood. Esmé proved an excellent linguist. She rapidly expanded her French and soon learned Russian, as well as a little Italian. With her help I was able to speak slightly better Turkish. The skill for languages was one we shared and increased my belief that we actually were twin souls.