Strange Music (30 page)

Rowhani stretched a hand toward it. ‘Imagine ambassadors from every European country – but especially our nearest neighbours – imagine them lined up there, trembling as they waited on the sultan's pleasure. “The sick man of Europe” lay centuries in the future, then.'

‘Are you Persian or Turkish yourself?' she asked.

He laughed. ‘Dear Miss Bullen-ffitch!' he said. ‘Do you know which people we Orientals fear dealing with the most, whether we are Persian or Turkish?'

‘The Arabs?' she guessed.

‘No! The English! You are so direct. If you want to know something, you simply ask. It unnerves us because then we feel obliged to answer with equal directness.' He shivered theatrically.

Then it was her turn to laugh. ‘I seem to remember someone asking an almost endless string of questions this morning . . .'

‘Direct questions? Blunt questions?'

She cast her mind back and realized he was right, and at last she put her finger on what had made it so intense and so tiring. All his questions had been oblique. Instead of asking, for instance, ‘Shall we be using seven-colour gravure?' he'd say something like: ‘Help me escape from my own ignorance . . . I've heard of a printing process called seven-colour gravure. Can you perhaps explain?' Again and again it had given her the feeling that he was somehow nudging her into a trap – having to commit Manutius to such an expensive process without his having to ask for it directly.

She turned to him with a smile. ‘Let me rephrase that. I suppose . . . what with knowing so many useful people in Istanbul, and having such a superb house here in quite the best quarter of the city – not to mention useful kinsmen – you must hope that political developments outside your control will never require you to make a very uncomfortable choice?'

He conceded with a nod. ‘On the other hand, to have any sort of choice at all is one step up from having none.'

He led her back almost to the point where they had landed, except that they were now inside the wall. Their way passed through several courtyards, each filled with a seemingly impenetrable garden, over whose hedges and walls she could glimpse, amid groves of cypresses, a series of ancient kiosks, all with shuttered windows.

‘Does anyone live in those places?' she asked.

‘They were reserved for imperial widows . . . elderly princesses, and so on – to live out their days. A foretaste of paradise, it was claimed. How our aspirations have changed, eh!'

Toward Seraglio Point they climbed a series of marble staircases to a lofty, white promenade where, for the first time, they mingled with tourists. ‘Asia!' Rowhani waved a hand across the blue expanse of the sea toward the rest of the city. ‘Here we stand at the very limit of Europe.'

She tried to muster a complex thought, wondering whether European institutions and values would push that boundary farther east or would Eastern mores gently subvert those of the West and so push it in the opposite direction? It was the question that now overhung all future dealings between Manutius and Rowhani's . . . clique? . . . faction? . . . cabal? The very fact that no reach-me-down English word exactly fitted the situation that had been revealed in that morning's negotiations was itself indicative. And the complexity baffled her or, more precisely, frightened her with the thought that a single ill-chosen word here would carry nuances undreamed of back in Rathbone Mews.

She took refuge in obscurity. ‘I work for a man whose attitude to limits is actually his driving force.'

‘Interesting . . .?' There was just a hint of a question mark in the word.

‘I'm sure you know the cliché: “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage . . .” When he hears that, he thinks, “Ah yes, but limits do!” Limits are a prison to him and he immediately starts digging tunnels.'

‘
Very
interesting,' Rowhani murmured.

Well, when it came to signing contracts he couldn't claim he hadn't been warned.

He took her on a tour of the remaining kiosks. The first was closed ‘even to the Faithful, for it houses the mantle of the Prophet,' he explained in a tone of public reverence that (she felt sure) masked a private amusement. Then, with undoubted pride on his part, came the Kiosk of Baghdad, crammed with priceless Persian porcelains.

‘Those red flowers . . .' he pointed to a detail in the decoration. ‘The pigment is derived from real coral but the art has been lost.'

The crowning of their tour was the imperial treasury – a scene out of the Arabian Nights. But no cave of Aladdin or Ali Baba could match these riches, the hoarding of eight centuries of rulers who, for most of that time, had been the lords of the ancient world. There were caskets for spices, jewel boxes, gem-studded robes, ceremonial swords . . . weapons from the time of Yenghis Khan, and even from the days of Mohammed: daggers and scimitars of silver and gold, encrusted with precious stones . . . and golden chests of every size, one decked with rubies, another with sapphires. On one table, quite casually displayed, stood a casket carved from a single giant emerald, which must have been as large as an ostrich egg. Another room was filled with coffee services and flagons and pitchers, all quite exquisite; yet another was given over to precious cloths – from tissues of fairylike daintiness to great caparisons of gold thread for camels and horses; also saddle cloths of silver and gold, bordered with flowers of precious stones.

‘Did it do them any good, I wonder?' Faith murmured.

Rowhani turned to her, bewildered.

‘If one of the sultans woke up with a hangover – no! They were Muslim, of course. OK – a headache. If one of them woke up with a headache, did the pain go away when they remembered they owned all this? Did they gloat over it? You couldn't do it all in one day. Did they spin it out? A flagon today, a gold chest tomorrow, a cloth of woven air the next day? There's a maharajah in India who has a hundred or more Rolls-Royces. Why?'

He clearly did not welcome this sort of speculation; she had a fleeting intuition that the accumulation of wealth was, for him, an end in itself. The very idea that it might be for something
other
– beyond the simple act of acquisition – was perhaps impossible for him to grasp. ‘On certain festive days the sultan would throw handfuls of gold coins into the hareem of the concubines for them to fight over,' he offered.

‘Ah! Well, if one is going to behave like that, I suppose one would want a fair bit of accumulated wealth to fall back on.'

For the first time in any of her international travels she wished Eric Brandon could be with her; he would know the
mot juste
for all this.

Still slightly nonplussed, Rowhani led her toward the end of the chamber, where stood a collection of ancient thrones of state, made for sitting cross-legged in the former royal manner. One was a blaze of rubies and pearls; another was studded with emeralds and sapphires, making it seem to ripple like the sea; even Faith, in her present mood, was slightly awestruck.

‘And this is the climax,' he announced dramatically as he led her into the final chamber. And there, standing motionless and terrifying behind sheets of glass, were the twenty-eight life-sized puppets of the sultans who had ruled between the fall of Constantinople and the end of the eighteenth century; as each of them died he was brought here in effigy, wearing his court costume and ceremonial arms. And there they now stood, shoulder to shoulder, grotesquely lifelike, dressed in wonderful brocades embroidered with mysterious designs that no doubt held some occult significance, turbaned in silk with magnificent aigrettes and epaulettes of jewels . . . and more than slightly dusty.

Now Faith was in a quandary. Rowhani clearly expected her to be impressed . . . bowled over, even, by this gross display of riches. True, it was a museum these days but it displayed what had once been the accumulated
personal
riches of one man – the supreme sultan of his day. Should she play the acquiescent guest and let herself be bowled over?

No. It was impossible. If she was expected to understand his attitude, then he must equally understand hers. Ve are not
always
prostitoots now!

She drew a deep breath and said, ‘They had no idea what wealth was
for
, did they!'

He took a step back and stared at her. ‘In what way?'

‘Think! If they had cashed in this lot and put the proceeds into universities . . . inventions . . . sewerage systems . . . shipping . . . engineering . . . they could have done it all, way ahead of the rest of the world. They would never have become the “Sick Man of Europe.” They had the cure right here, under their noses. And the new wealth it would have generated would have turned this display into a mere sideshow.'

Even as she spoke, she knew how close to the wind she was sailing. The court of the Shah was patterned more on these old Turkish courts than on . . . well, Buckingham Palace. The very book they had planned in outline that same morning would be modern publishing's equivalent to these ancient treasures, which was no doubt why, or partly why, he had brought her here. She waited for his response.

When it came, he took her by surprise.

He ushered her outside and led her, in silence, a good hundred paces out into the surrounding parkland, under the trees. There he looked all about and, grinning broadly, said, ‘I am going to shock you now, and I wouldn't like what I'm going to say to be overheard. In short, Miss Bullen-ffitch, I am going to ask you a direct question: what you said back there – about the proper use of public wealth – were you hoping to test me?'

Faith stared uncomfortably over his shoulder; now that she knew the man's technique: always oblique, never advancing to a position from which he could not retreat. This sudden burst of directness was especially unnerving.

‘
En passant,
perhaps,' she said. ‘You seemed to expect me to be dumbstruck by . . . all that.' She waved a hand toward the kiosks and treasure chambers. ‘I thought it only fair to let you know my true feelings.'

‘All I was hoping . . .' He began to laugh. ‘I hoped you would see some parallel between the magnificent book on which we are about to embark and some of these treasures around us here.'

‘Oh, but I saw it only too clearly. However, I want it to be quite understood that – for Manutius – this is a straightforward commercial venture. We happen to be
the
master-craftsmen in our field, with the best designers, the best editors, the most assiduous researchers—'

‘Yes, yes, yes. I knew all that before I even approached your Mister Fogel—'

Here's an interesting reversal of history, she thought. Had it not been Fogel who had approached the Iranian ambassador?

‘So!' she said. ‘Understanding all around!'

‘Hmmm,' was all he said to that. Then, suddenly belligerent (and, she suspected, more so than he intended) he said, ‘You're off to Israel next?'

She nodded.

‘They'll probably tell you that when Theodor Herzl met the Sultan Abdul Hamid the Second – you know about Herzl?'

‘Founder of Zionism . . .
political
Zionism, anyway.'

‘Yes. When he asked the Sultan to donate Palestine to the Zionists, the reply was, in effect, “not while I live and not while the empire exists.” Well . . . he's dead and so is the empire but that reply is hardly a legal document.'

‘I'll certainly bear that in mind,' she assured him – straight-faced.

Dinner – a feast of Turkish cuisine – was over and still he had not started the rigmarole that would lead her to hand over the envelope Alex had given her. How many Rowhanis were there – perhaps he was not the one they had in mind? Or perhaps he would wait until his wife had retired – not that Faith was eager for that moment, for, apart from anything else, Yasmin Rowhani, was a philosophy graduate from the Sorbonne whose doctorate, from Uppsala, had concerned Kierkegaard and his role in the development of existentialism. She and Faith had quite some conversation on the subject during the many courses of their dinner, and – again – Faith found herself wishing that Eric were here, if only to allow her to watch while his attachment to Wittgenstein and the Positivists took a nasty knock. She was sure Eric had too much influence over Felix, steering him away from those irrational, self-contradictory impulses that were the true source of his art. And if anyone could shake Eric out of his complacency it was this intellectual giant of a woman.

‘If you ever come to London, you simply must visit us,' she told them, and went on to describe the Dower House community. ‘There's one man in particular – Eric Brandon, a writer and illustrator, who knows everything about the “thatness” of things, in the positivist sense, and nothing about the “whatness” of things in Kierkegaard's sense. I mean, he knows
that
a thing exists without necessarily knowing, or even wanting to know,
what
it is. He needs some re-education, I think.'

Yasmin raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘You seem well qualified to take him in hand yourself.'

‘Unfortunately, all I know is what I've gleaned from reading the galleys of a book Bertrand Russell is writing for us—'

‘Really?' She sat upright and leaned forward. ‘He's a great thinker
and
a great doer.'

‘And a model author. But I have to confess that until about five weeks ago, Kierkegaard was just a name to me.'

‘This book—'

‘It's a kind of history of Western thinking. A layman's guide to every important strand in the development of Western philosophy – including, of course, influences from Islam. Unfortunately, it's proving difficult to illustrate . . . portraits, facsimile signatures, pictures of birthplaces, statues, title pages in Latin . . . it becomes very repetitive. And parallels in art are non-existent. Who is the greatest philosopher in the age of the baroque? Descartes!'