The Abyssinian Proof (3 page)

There was no answer.

“There is no reason for you to die.”

“There’s no reason for me to believe you either,” the voice said. “I’m sure you’re not alone.”

“No, but I’ll come in alone.”

“Why would you do that? Are you trying to prove your bravery?”

“I don’t need to prove my mettle against a boy,” Kamil retorted, annoyed. “I want to talk to you. There’s an army out here. Take your pick.”

Captain Arif was pressed against the side of the wall.

The door cracked open and Kamil could see the shadow of a face beyond it. “I agree that talking is better than dying,” the voice said, closer now. “Come in.”

Kamil pushed through the door and it slammed shut behind him. He flinched away from a light held directly before his eyes. A moment later, the light receded. A dark-haired boy with a tired smile beckoned him into the room.

“Sit, Kamil Pasha. Thank you for honoring me with your visit.” He indicated a chair across the sparsely furnished room. There was one other chair, a stained mattress on the floor, and a basket containing food and a book.

As Kamil sat down, he realized his revolver was gone. He scanned the room. Marko was wearing trousers and a shirt, but Kamil didn’t discount the possibility that the revolver or some other weapon was secreted in the boy’s waistband. Marko brought the other chair to sit facing Kamil and placed the lamp between them. His face was attractive, still rounded with childish plumpness. A dark fuzz across his upper lip and uneven patches on his cheeks indicated the beginnings of a mustache and beard. He had not even begun to shave yet, Kamil observed, then reminded himself of the brutality of the boy’s crime.

“What can I do for you, Kamil Pasha?” Marko’s voice was deeper than his looks implied.

“I would like for you to come with me quietly. The house is surrounded by forty gendarmes. The people who helped you have all been arrested.” At that, Kamil saw Marko’s face collapse. For a moment, he thought the boy would cry, but then he saw anger in his eyes.

“What advantage would it bring me to go with you?”

“You would live.”

“Ah.”

They sat silently for a moment. Then Marko asked, “Answer me this, pasha. If a man kills another man but feels no remorse, does that mean he is by nature a bloodthirsty brute?”

“That depends entirely on the context. A soldier who kills the enemy of his country may be justly proud of his service, while a man who kills another out of greed is an enemy of society.”

“Exactly so.” Marko leaned forward, his eyes shining with passion. “But one people’s just cause is another people’s lost territory. Therein lies the dilemma. We Macedonians won our liberty from your empire, but now it has pulled us back like an abused wife who has run away and must be punished. We have an Ottoman governor, but he is simply the greatest of the bandits pillaging our land.”

“The empire’s laws are just,” Kamil retorted.

“That’s a dream. We’re living a nightmare.”

“Why did you kill the governor’s aide?”

“He dishonored my sister.”

Kamil was taken aback. “Why didn’t you accuse him in court?” The moment he uttered the words, he knew how futile such a gesture would have been. The Balkan provinces were in such chaos that the rule of law had ceased to be applied, and judging by the tales of refugees, rape was probably a daily occurrence, one of many unspeakable crimes committed by each side against the other.

Marko nodded, acknowledging Kamil’s confusion. “You’re a wise man, Kamil Pasha. I understand that you’re devoted to your empire, as I am to my people. By killing the governor’s man, I cleaned his filth from a small spot of our land, the size of my palm perhaps.” He held out his hand. “You must imagine thousands upon thousands of hands, each cleansing the space before them. We will win because each man’s ambition is the same. You will lose, pasha, because your empire is driven by the greed of a few men.”

“That’s not so, Marko,” Kamil responded heatedly. “The empire’s system of laws…”

Suddenly Marko pulled Kamil’s revolver from his shirt, held it to his own temple, and fired.

Kamil jumped up from the chair and staggered backward. The door slammed open and Captain Arif rushed in, followed by a dozen heavily armed soldiers. Marko lay on his side, the basket of food on the floor next to him spattered with blood.

“Search the room,” Kamil told the captain.

He picked the book out of the basket, where it had miraculously remained untouched. English poems by John Donne. Kamil opened it at the marker and read, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful.”

“No other weapons,” Captain Arif announced, holding out Kamil’s revolver.

Kamil took the gun and slid it into its holster. He steadied himself for a moment against the chair, then dropped the book into his pocket and walked out.

K
AMIL MOUNTED HIS
horse and let it wander at will through the sleeping lanes of the Old City. After a while, the sky began to bleed light. In the distance, Kamil could make out the dome and minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet, and those of its Byzantine sister, the Aya Sofya. The dawn call to prayer hovered in the air, snaking like mist from every corner of the city. Long shadows prostrated themselves before the orange light of the rising sun. This early in the morning, Karaköy Square was nearly empty. He passed two fishermen squatting by basins in which fish feebly circled. Trapped and tired, Kamil thought, feeling compassion for a fellow creature in similar straits.

Restless and unable to shake the image of the boy’s face—his look of surprise at the moment of death—Kamil dismounted. He wanted to walk the rest of the way to his office, so he left his horse at a stable behind the square.

He bought a simit from a man balancing a tray of the circular breads on his head, then began the steep climb up High Kaldirim Road, a broad stairway lined with shops, most of which were still shuttered. Finding he had no appetite, Kamil offered the rest of his simit to a bony street dog. The dog sniffed it suspiciously, then took it with a delicate snap of its teeth before rushing off.

Kamil’s yellow kid boots navigated the uneven steps. His mother had commissioned them from a master bootmaker in Aleppo. Despite the delicate leather and intricate tooling, the boots were almost indestructible, tanned by a secret method passed from father to son that made the leather impervious to knife and water. Their wearer was further protected by talismanic symbols carved inside the shaft. Ill with a wasting disease, his mother had whispered to him, “So that Allah might lighten your step and guard your path,” while the bootmaker’s assistant took elaborate measurements of his feet. She didn’t live to see the boots finished, but he felt her love in them. It was this, rather than the talismanic charms, he believed, that gave the boots their singular effect.

The baker Ibo leaned out of his shop, hands and forearms white with flour. He motioned a glass of tea at Kamil. “Do good and receive kindness. Come and rest a moment, Magistrate Bey.”

“Another time, Ibo.” Kamil was in no mood for idle chatter.

He reached into his pocket for his string of beads. As he walked, he drew them over his right hand, his thumb and forefinger smoothing each bead along its way, reading the inflections worn into the amber by his father and grandfather, and finding peace in that continual text. Marko’s face receded and Kamil settled into the calm apprehensiveness that allowed him to wander among the facts, gather them up, sort them.

The Christian icon was different, he thought, from the other stolen objects. It was too well known to be sold or even displayed openly. That required a special kind of buyer.

By now he was almost at the top of the road of stairs, where it entered the Grande Rue de Pera.

“Bey, bey.”

Kamil was startled from his reverie by a tug on his jacket. He swung around, irritated to see that it was a street urchin. The boy stepped back but held his ground. Enormous eyes in a pale, fine-boned face focused expectantly on Kamil. A threadbare sweater and wide, much-patched trousers hung on the boy’s slim body, held in place by a ragged sash. His bare feet were brown, although whether from the sun or the dirt of the streets was unclear.

The boy stuttered, “Bey, I…” He lowered his eyes and began to back away.

If the boy were a pickpocket, he would have been long gone by now. Kamil reached into his pocket for a coin.

When the boy saw the kurush in Kamil’s outstretched hand, his cheeks flushed red and he shook his head vehemently.

“Well, what do you want, my son?” Kamil asked.

The boy seemed to regain some of his courage. He reached into his sash, drew out an object, and handed it wordlessly to Kamil. It was a quill pen. Kamil took it, puzzled.

“Thank you,” he said, turning it over in his hand. It was a simple, common pen like those used in his office. He examined the boy’s face. He looked familiar, but Kamil couldn’t place him. Perhaps one of the apprentices at the hamam baths he went to every week, or the boy at the coffeehouse who refilled his tea and refreshed the tobacco in his narghile? They were all about the same age, eight or nine, and lean as street cats.

The boy was still looking at Kamil expectantly.

“What’s your name?”

“Avi, bey. I am Avi. I brought you a message from Amalia Teyze,” he blurted out. “You told me that if I learned to use this,” he indicated the pen, “I should come back and see you.”

“Of course,” Kamil exclaimed. This was the young boy sent last year by the Jewish midwife of Middle Village to give him a message about a murder case. He had been so impressed by the boy’s refusal to accept payment—because, the boy had insisted, he was only doing his duty—that Kamil had given him the first object within reach, a pen from his desk. He remembered Avi as the child with hungry eyes, taking in everything in the room. Someone eager to know things.

“Well, Avi. Of course, I remember you.” Kamil wondered what the boy expected of him. Despite the early hour, a small crowd had begun to form around them.

“Why don’t we walk a bit together.” Kamil resumed his climb, the boy keeping pace beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, Kamil could see Avi trying to keep a serious demeanor, but his joy kept breaking through. It both amused Kamil and touched him.

“And did you learn to use the pen?” Kamil asked.

Avi stopped and turned to him with a wide grin.

“Yes, bey. Amalia Teyze taught me letters.”

Kamil was surprised. He had thought the midwife illiterate, like so many of the empire’s subjects. “And what can you write?”

They began to walk again.

“My name,” Avi said excitedly. “I can write my name.”

“Is that so?” Kamil noted noncommittally. He found himself inexplicably disappointed that Avi hadn’t learned more than just his name, but reminded himself that this was more than most people could do.

They stopped at a patisserie and he bought Avi a yeast bun stuffed with goat’s cheese. The well-heeled patrons stared disapprovingly as the boy placed the bun on his palm and swiftly devoured it, using his other hand to shield it. Kamil wondered why the boy ate so quickly and furtively, as if someone might steal the bun from his hands, and realized he must be very hungry. But surely the midwife cooked for the boy? She had seemed a kind and efficient woman. He took a closer look at the boy’s ragged clothing, his grimy face and bare feet. When Avi had come to his office the previous year, his clothing had shown signs of attention from a loving hand. Kamil remembered a colorful sweater and patched but clean trousers. Something must have happened. Had the boy run away? He would give Avi some tea and something more to eat at the courthouse, then sit him down and find out what this was all about. He bought some meat-filled pastries and cheese börek, and then they resumed their walk down the Grande Rue de Pera.

When they reached the entrance to the courthouse, Avi stepped back into the street and, crossing his arms, began to shiver, his eyes shifting between the enormous, imposing door at the top of the stairs, Kamil’s face, and the ground.

“What is it?”

“I really can write,” Avi said softly. “But I’m not anybody.”

Kamil stooped down and told him, “Well, come in and show me what you’ve learned.” He walked up the stairs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avi trailing behind, awestruck.

Kamil greeted the burly doorkeeper. “Good morning, Ibrahim.”

“Günaydin, pasha.” Ibrahim held open the door and bowed low as Kamil passed through.

Kamil suddenly heard a commotion and turned. The doorkeeper had lifted Avi by his sweater like a mother cat lifting her kitten and was hoisting him out of the door.

“Ibrahim, let him go,” Kamil called out. “He’s here to see me.”

Ibrahim shrugged and dropped the boy, who scuttled to Kamil’s side. Kamil saw that he was crying but trying to hide it. They walked a short way over the tiled floor, past the small room behind the doorkeeper’s station, in which a teakettle was steaming over a brazier. Ibrahim followed with a lamp. At the end of the corridor, the door to the courtroom, still locked at this hour, loomed in the half light. It was a massive double door, carved with swags of gilded roses, as if justice were a pleasure garden. Beyond was a horseshoe-shaped room that always reminded Kamil of a theater, with magistrates and solicitors striding across the stage beneath the box that held the presiding judge. The audience would sit behind a waist-high partition, fidgeting and rumbling as if bored by the play.

They entered the suite of rooms that made up the magistrate’s offices and waited while Ibrahim lit the lamps. The outer office was still empty of scribes at this hour. During the day, all manner of the empire’s subjects sat, patiently waiting to pour their story into the ear of a scribe, who would then translate it into the stilted, self-aggrandizing language of bureaucracy in the form of a petition. At the back were two doors to smaller rooms in which Kamil’s legal assistants met with solicitors and their clients. A heavy gilded door, mercifully without a garden motif, opened onto Kamil’s private office.

The light picked out Abdullah, Kamil’s head clerk, snoring on a divan in the outer office. The soles of his feet showed brownish yellow through holes in his socks.