The Art Student's War (72 page)

They sat in plush tawny leather armchairs. Beautiful rugs were hanging on the walls, which were painted gold. Beautiful rugs lay atop beautiful rugs on the floor. There were low, ornate wooden tables on which strange knickknacks were arranged. There were vases overspilling with flowers. The room smelled wonderful. “Wowee,” Maggie said. “Shazam!”

Bianca wasn’t at all sure this was an appropriate response. Was it even a real word—or just a radio word?

But she needn’t have worried. Mr. Caglayangil looked gratified, and he even knew the radio reference. “Captain Marvel,” he said.

“My oh my, this is
nice!”
Maggie exclaimed. “Being in here, it’s like traveling to a foreign country. It’s like some exotic vacation.” Mr. Caglayangil grinned broadly. No matter how old they were, men loved Maggie.

“Are most of the things from Turkey?” Bianca asked him.

“Most everything from Turkey.”

“That’s an extraordinary chest.”

Against the wall stood a fantastically ornate cabinet that Papa the woodworker would have knelt to inspect. “It is called a
dolap,”
Mr. Caglayangil said. “More than two hundred years old.”

“Well I’ll be,” Maggie said. “It’s so fancy. And look at this paperweight.”

“That is a candlestick. We call it a
shamdan,”
Mr. Caglayangil said.

“Well
this
one’s a paperweight.”

“That is a toothpick holder. We call it
kurdanlik.”

“And that? That is
quite
an amazing chest,” Bianca said. She hardly had a vocabulary to describe it—a wooden chest, painted a weathered green, elaborately done up with constellations of studs and metal fastenings.

“It is a
cheyiz
. A dowry chest. Also antique.”

“And that painting,” Maggie interposed. “It’s like an angel.”

“It is an angel. It is Gabriel. And that is Mary. I am a Christian man. Rare in Turkey.”

“We’re Christians too,” Maggie said.

“Yes,” Mr. Caglayangil said.

A very dark-skinned woman, though she was not a Negro, brought in a big silver tray on which was resting a vast teapot, some gold-rimmed glasses, a bowl full of ice cubes, and a plate full of pastries. “Baklava?” Mr. Caglayangil said.

“I know it,” Bianca said.

“What a lovely teapot,” Maggie said.

“Chaydan,”
Mr. Caglayangil said. “Also an antique. This
chaydan
was once used in the court of Abdul Hamid.”

“Well I’ll be,” Maggie said.

“I certainly didn’t mean to barge in like this,” Bianca said. “I just wanted to see where Steve worked.”

“You are welcome any time. Steve is not here until three o’clock, four o’clock. You are welcome to wait right here.”

“Oh we can’t stay so long,” Bianca said. “Though we’d love to. I’ve never been in a room like this.”

Mr. Caglayangil nodded and said, “No, you never.”

“I guess I got to Turkey at last. Today.”

“Better late than never.” And Mr. Caglayangil laughed heartily.

Bianca said, “You know, Steve loves his job. I was so happy when he told me he was working for you.”

The dark-skinned woman set before Maggie and Bianca glasses of tea and the plate of Turkish pastries, and placed the ice cubes and what looked like a glass of water before Mr. Caglayangil, then departed from the room, all without saying a word.

“Your uncle, the doctor, he visits me one day. He tells me his nephew looks for a job. I tell the doctor, The boy looks no more, he has a job with me. The doctor says, Joe (he calls me Joe, most people do, but my name is Yusuf), he says, Joe, I want no favors from you. I tell him, Doctor, you saved my only child, my Melek. You are the reason I have two grandsons
now. Without you, my family dies out. You ask me any favor, I do it for you.

“The doctor says, No favors, Joe, I accept no favors from you. I say, Doctor, I wait more than ten years to do a favor to you. You ask me give your cat a job, I hire your cat.” Mr. Caglayangil laughed heartily. In addition to his gold tie, he was wearing a number of gold rings. He was a sparkling presence. Bianca picked up her gold-rimmed glass of tea, which smelled of flowers she couldn’t identify.

Mr. Caglayangil went on: “The doctor says, No favors. So I begin thinking …” Mr. Caglayangil illustrated the process by animatedly furrowing his brow. “And then I say, Doctor, will you do
me
a favor? And the doctor says, Of course, Joe. And I say, Okay, do me this favor: let me do
you
a favor. And the doctor says, I accept no favors.

“So I think some more.” Mr. Caglayangil again paused to demonstrate. He was enjoying himself hugely. “And then I say, Well then, Doctor, you won’t let me do you
one
favor, so I’ll do you
two
favors. First, I hire your nephew. Second, I tell you it is no favor.”

Mr. Caglayangil was consumed by mirth. At the thought of how he’d outmaneuvered the great doctor, tears of hilarity leaked from his eyes.

Bianca sipped eagerly from her tea, which turned out to be more than wonderful. It was mint and honey and flowers—all the flowers of the Middle East—and with its flavors on her palate the room’s beauty intensified. The pigments in the hanging rugs deepened, and the miraculous dowry chest grew yet more miraculous, the filigrees more artfully turned, its colors older and richer and braver. Not even in the movies, perhaps only in dreams, had she ever sat in a room of such color and sumptuosity.

Mr. Caglayangil was still chuckling to himself as Bianca took another, deeper sip from her glass and at once she made a far-flung connection. It might just as well have been Uncle Dennis sitting before her. Yes, it might have been Uncle Dennis, and not a wizened, white-haired, gold-encrusted Turkish immigrant, for the two men were brothers of a sort. Both men saw their acts of kindness as humorous. They shared a kind of cosmic joke: it was ever so funny, it made them
laugh
, to think about engineering some ingenious act of charity.

“And now I will drink a magic drink,” Mr. Caglayangil said. “Would you like to see a magic drink?”

“Of course,” Bianca said.

“Sure thing,” Maggie said.

“It looks like water,” Mr. Caglayangil said, holding up the clear glass.

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“It certainly does,” Bianca said.

“But it isn’t. And now I add real water.” He poured clear liquid into the clear liquid. Quickly, inexplicably, the mixture turned milky white.

“Shazam!” Maggie said.

“Shazam!” Mr. Caglayangil echoed.

“What is it?” Bianca asked.

“It is raki. Like the Greek ouzo. Only the Greeks do not make it so good. They are a younger culture.” Mr. Caglayangil offered this assessment so solemnly, Bianca didn’t immediately understand it was another little joke. “Maybe you would try some …”

“I’d be willing to try,” Maggie said. She was never one for tea.

Bianca glanced down at her domed stomach and said, “I’ll stick with the tea. It’s wonderfully delicious.”

Mr. Caglayangil peered at her. His deep-set eyes were glittering. He said, “Maybe I believe the doctor’s niece has her own magic inside her.”

Bianca felt herself blush. “Yes …”

Mr. Caglayangil lifted his cloudy glass and peered hard into it, as if some stubborn, recondite answer might be divined there. “Someday,” he went on, “my grandsons will own this company. They are only six years old and four years old, but already they understand. I explain it to them. They shake hands with Steve. I tell them, You owe your lives to this man’s uncle. This is the great doctor’s nephew. They understand. As long as he wants it, Steve has a job here—a good job.”

“But is he a good worker?” Maggie said. She asked this in a new way she had: her head cocked and her enhanced chin uplifted. No doubt, after she’d had her nose done a whole new repertoire of gestures would surface—and would go on surfacing once she’d had her eyes done, and her forehead done, and her ears done, and her breasts done, and each of these new gestures would turn out to be, from the male point of view, irresistibly winsome. Mr. Caglayangil was enthralled.

Again he furrowed his white eyebrows at her. “A good worker? Steve?” His tone of simulated sternness, as though disdainful of anyone asking so simpleminded a question, was in fact a form of flirtatiousness. “Of course he is. He’s the doctor’s nephew.”

Uncle Dennis had been away for what seemed like ages, since before the move to Reston Street nearly a month ago. He’d given them “time to settle in.”

He arrived with two bottles of champagne—which was surprising, since he knew Papa considered it a swindle. But Uncle Dennis must have gotten wind of the new champagne glasses, and the bottles turned out to be the perfect gift: Mamma glowed while leading her guests into her new dining room and offering them champagne from French champagne glasses. The provider of the glasses—Ira—had also been invited, so they were seven in all: Papa, Mamma, Uncle Dennis, Bianca, Grant, Edith, and Ira. Rita and Stevie had their own event to attend—a wedding rehearsal for one of Stevie’s co-workers at Turk’s Trucks—and this, too, seemed encouraging: the new job was enriching their social life.

Yes, Ira was still in Detroit, still staying in the place in Highland Park that rented rooms by the week. In retrospect, he should have found a more long-term rental; he was into his second month now. The minimal renovations that Papa had recommended if Ira were to get a “fair price” for the house were complete. The carpets had been torn up and the junk hauled away, the floorboards that needed replacing had been replaced, everything had been dusted and scrubbed, and the interior walls repainted. Bathrooms had been retiled, banisters repaired, windows reputtied. The eaves’ troughs had been cleaned, new shrubs planted, and the lawn reseeded. But now Ira wished to go a step further. He wanted to renovate the little room on the third floor, which had no proper ceiling. Papa sternly counseled against: it wasn’t certain, when Ira sold the house, he would recover the investment. But Ira, in his rapid and roundabout and ever-apologetic way, was also adamant. That room could easily be the most charming room in the entire house. All it needed was a proper ceiling and some built-in bookcases to make a beautiful little library.

“Not every buyer wants a library,” Papa told him.

“But the right sort of buyer does.”

“The right sort of buyer is the one paying the most.”

“The right sort of buyer understands the house.”

Papa nodded, not quite able to conceal his pleasure. Ira was learning to stand up to him, at least while echoing Papa’s own underlying philosophy.

At dinner, which wasn’t Mamma’s best (Slumped Pork, greasier than usual), Edith held forth. She’d recently read some articles about tuberculosis, whose infection rates throughout the country were way down. It was possible that we—she spoke of
we
—might eliminate it altogether in the next few years. And Uncle Dennis nodded respectfully, almost
gratefully, as though deferring to a medical expert. He would be in for a great deal of this, Bianca foresaw, after Edith began her training in earnest. Meanwhile, Bianca was hoping for some precious time alone with her uncle.

After dinner, the three women went out to the kitchen, to clean up, the four men into the living room, to drink a bit more of Papa’s wine. Bianca was cheered to overhear hearty roars of male laughter—Grant was in good form tonight. And Ira, too, was telling stories, in that nervous and rushed way of his. More laughter. And then Papa’s voice lifted to say: “We will all go smelt fishing.”

This
made Bianca laugh. “Can you picture Ira smelt fishing?”

“He was a miler in high school,” Edith replied. She seemed to think Bianca was ridiculing Ira, when she was actually speaking fondly. With her unreliable sense of humor, Edith often misunderstood teasing. “He was in the New Jersey state finals,” she went on. “He is quite athletic.”

“Oh I don’t doubt it. It’s just I have trouble picturing Papa and Uncle Dennis and Grant and Ira going fishing together. It’s what you’d call a motley crew.”

“Your father has made a friend,” Mamma declared.

Mamma said this with some emphasis and Bianca let the words echo in her head.

She saw, belatedly, that Mamma was correct. It wasn’t merely Ira’s house in Palmer Woods, with all its engaging challenges, that drew Papa so potently. Nor was it Ira’s helplessness, and Papa’s gruff but tenderhearted inability to watch somebody getting swindled. No, Papa—who had so few real friends—had come to value Ira as a friend.

On the face of it, this seemed absurdly unlikely: Ira was some twenty years younger than Papa and he was a Jewish boy from New Jersey who spoke ten words to Papa’s one. But Papa’s friendships had never followed any discernible logic. What did he have in common with Uncle Dennis, who was never more himself than when expatiating on interstellar spaceflight?

“Your father has made a friend,” Mamma declared once more, and added, “It’s good for him.”

And Bianca understood, again belatedly, just how comforting this was for Mamma, who, for all her own troubles these past few months, had been worrying about Papa. About his drinking too much, and nightly barricading himself behind his newspaper. About his slumped posture and repetitiveness. Mamma understood how restorative finding
a friend had been, especially a friend of Ira’s ineptitude: Papa felt newly helpful and needed. In inviting Ira to dinner so many nights, Mamma had been looking after her husband. Ira’s endless renovations were a blessing for everyone. He would be sorely missed, when he returned to New Jersey …

Bianca seized on the prerogatives of her pregnancy to uproot Uncle Dennis from the smoky company of men. Could the doctor give her a few minutes? Of course, of course—he was just thinking he needed a trip to the pharmacy.

When they stepped out the front door, it seemed the two of them ought to be walking down Inquiry. But those days were over—forever. This street was called Reston and Bianca felt a little disoriented.

Spring was in the air and this, too, was disorienting, but cheerfully so. Winter had been so protracted and so frightening. Could it really be over? All those cold and dismally dark and scary days were behind her?