“Don’t you think it’s time for you to start a family of your own? You’re twenty years old. He’s a good, steady man, reliable. He can provide you with a fine household. His wife died two years ago. He wants to remarry, and he wants to marry you.”
When I didn’t say anything, Papa added, “You needn’t be concerned. There are no children from the first marriage.”
I looked at him and tried to smile. “But I’m not planning to marry, Papa. At least not at the moment. And I don’t wish to marry Amin Efendi. He’s much too old for me.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. During the long silence that followed, he sat back in his chair and regarded me with an unreadable expression. In order not to think, I counted the objects on his desk-two inkwells, a letter opener, a stack of white linen paper, four pens. One of the pens was leaking ink onto the blotter.
“Your pen is leaking, Papa,” I blurted out nervously, pointing to the stain.
Papa stood abruptly and stalked out of the room. Later, at dinner, he didn’t look at me but said matter-of-factly into his stewed lamb, “You will be engaged to Amin Efendi in three months. That will give you enough time to prepare. Allah knows where we’ll be able to procure a trousseau for you. Your mother taught you nothing. We’ll have to buy it.” He looked at Aunt Hüsnü, who nodded.
“I will not marry him, Papa. It is forbidden by the Holy Quran to force your child into marriage.” I set myself against my father. My mother’s approving presence seemed to regard the scene from afar.
“What rot is that? Is this what that ignorant Ismail Hodja taught you?” Papa shouted. “Filled you with religion like a stuffed dolma. This is a modern household and I expect you to obey me, not a musty old book muttered over by a lot of dirty old men with one foot in the darkness of history and one foot in the grave.”
Aunt Hüsnü continued chewing throughout this exchange, as if nothing at all could suppress her enjoyment of stewed lamb with apricots.
Violet came through the serving door behind Papa and Aunt Hüsnü carrying a tureen. I saw her spit into the soup.
20
The high, clear notes of the boy’s voice rise above the clamor of Kamil’s outer office.
“I can’t tell you. I’m only supposed to tell the bey.”
Suddenly the boy begins to cry. There is the sound of a scuffle.
Irritated, Kamil calls his assistant and asks him what is going on.
“A boy claims to have a message for you and refuses to divulge it to the head secretary.”
“All right,” Kamil sighs, “send him in here.”
The boy is about eight years old, slim and wary as a street cat, his hair cut close to his head. He is dressed in lovingly patched trousers and a colorful knit sweater. Upon seeing Kamil, he falls to his knees and prostrates himself on the floor, his nose pressed against the blue arabesques on the carpet. Kamil sees that he is shaking. He walks over and puts his hand on the boy’s bowed back.
“Stand up,” he says gently. “Stand up, my boy.”
The boy cautiously lifts himself from the floor, but stands with his head lowered. Kamil sees, however, that the boy’s eyes dart around the room, noting everything.
“What is your name?” he asks, trying to put him at ease.
“Avi, bey.”
“Well, then, Avi, why did you need to see me?”
Avi looks up at Kamil. His brown eyes are enormous in his fine-boned face. Kamil thinks to himself that these are eyes that see everything, ravenous eyes. He feels a pang of longing for the omnivorous freedom of a child’s appetite for life, not yet disciplined to distinguish raw from cooked, feasting without caring whether life is served at a table or from a tray on the floor. He smiles at Avi.
“Amalia Teyze sent me. From Middle Village. She said to tell you that she has some important information for you.” Kamil notes with approval that the boy’s words are unhurried and that he has regained his self-confidence.
“What is the information?”
Hands clasped behind his back, Avi continues in a singsong voice, as if he were reciting, “She said to tell you that some weeks ago the gardener for a konak at Chamyeri found a bundle of clothing by a pond in the forest. She said you would know which house. The gardener burned the clothing, but one of the maids saw him. The maid has relatives in our village. When she came to visit, she learned that Aunt Amalia was interested in such things and came and told her.”
The boy stops, still standing ramrod straight. His eyes, however, stray curiously to the silver inkwell, pens, and open books scattered on Kamil’s desk.
“That is, indeed, important information,” Kamil says, reaching in his waistcoat for a silver kurush. “We thank you for bringing it.”
“I can’t take payment,” he replies. “I was doing my duty.”
Kamil reaches over and plucks a quill pen from its holder. He holds it out to the boy.
“For your service, please accept this pen. If you learn to use it, come back and see me.”
The radiance of the boy’s face as he solemnly accepts the pen shoots Kamil through with a delicious pain, a mixture of regret, longing, and pleasure.
“Thank you, Avi. You may go. Please thank your aunt.”
He turns his back to the boy so that he should not see the emotion on his face, he-the rational administrator, representative of the all-powerful government.
21
“We’re lost,” I said querulously.
Violet claimed to know her way around the Grand Bazaar, but we had twice passed the same marble fountain on the Street of Caps.
“I know where I’m going,” Violet repeated for the fifth time.
I stopped in the narrow street and took my bearings. Violet looked over her shoulder and, seeing that I was no longer following her, returned and waited impatiently beside me, her eyes roaming over the shop displays. She had assured Aunt Hüsnü that she knew her way through the maze of covered streets, even though Aunt Hüsnü knew as well as I did that this was untrue. As my companion, she went where I went, and I had never been to the Grand Bazaar. Aunt Hüsnü seemed as relieved as we were that she would not be required to accompany us on our expedition to purchase items for my trousseau. I had no intention of purchasing anything of the sort, but adventure beckoned. The glittering bazaar cast its spell over me as soon as I passed through its massive gates.
We were to go to the shop of a friend of Papa’s, a goldsmith on the Avenue of Jewelers, to look at bracelets. At first we dawdled at every shop, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of slippers, bolts of cloth, carpets, hamam supplies, and precious stones, each with its own street of shops selling the same items in almost unthinkable profusion. When a shop owner spoke to us, we shied away, only to stop again at a different shop a few steps on.
Finally, I said, “Let’s find the goldsmith’s shop. Otherwise Papa will be angry.”
And that is when we became lost on the Street of Caps.
“Look,” Violet pointed. “An entire street of clothing.”
She drew me toward a shop selling brocaded vests. I purchased a vest for Violet and a bolt of cloth for myself and arranged to have them delivered to Nishantashou. Then I asked the shopkeeper for directions to the goldsmith’s shop.
“Follow this street,” he instructed us, pointing deeper into the bazaar, “until you come to a gate. That’s the entrance to the Bedestan. Pass though it. Outside the gate on the other side,” he assured us, “you’ll find the Avenue of Jewelers.”
Violet was already pulling me away.
Before long, we came to a set of thick, iron-studded gates. They led inside a room as large as a building embedded right in the heart of the bazaar. I craned my neck at the high, vaulted ceiling above the narrow lanes of shops. A wooden catwalk stretched around the periphery just beneath the ceiling. Violet nudged me and pointed at a tiny shop crammed with antique silver ornaments and vases. A slim woman in Frankish dress was bowed over a tray of necklaces. The shop next door sold gold jewelry, but of a design and quality I had never seen. Similar shops stretched before us down narrow lanes beneath the dome of this strange room like a stage set in a theater. My father’s goldsmith was forgotten.