The Oracle of Stamboul (15 page)

“How did the girl crack the code if she is living with him?”

“Ah,” said the Grand Vizier, flattening his mustache. “One of our men is her tutor. He brought the code to their lessons and said it was a puzzle.”

The Sultan was silent for a moment.

“What more do we know about this girl? What is her name again?”

“Eleonora Cohen. I have told you all we know about her. If you like, I will attempt to uncover more information. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Yes,” said the Sultan. “I would like that.”

As Ramadan dragged itself through the hot, ever-thinning days of early summer, Stamboul baked into a hard crust of acceptance. Steamers slowed through the straits and hugged its shady banks, the muezzin’s voice scratched with lack of water, and Eleonora sat at the windowsill, fanning herself with a book. The tension of each new day simmered, rose, and was released with the cannon shot at sundown. Even those who did not fast—the Armenians, the Greeks, the Europeans, and the Jews—all felt the same wave of relief at the end of the day when the streets filled with ice cream vendors, fortune-tellers, and dusty red tents. Each night lanterns were hung between the minarets of the New Mosque, wishing everyone a happy Ramadan. And the fireworks continued apace, though in a somewhat diminished capacity. Most evenings, the Bey broke his fast outside the house, with friends, colleagues, or distant cousins. He offered more than once to bring Eleonora along with him, but she declined. The thought of all those people, all that food and noise, was just too much. She was content with the quiet routine of her lessons, her reading, and meals alone in her room. All this changed, however, one Tuesday in the third week of Ramadan. That afternoon, Reverend Muehler arrived at the Bey’s house a few minutes late. He seemed more animated than usual, his face apple-red and covered with downy stubble.

“Well, hello there,” he said, ruffling her hair. “If it isn’t the famous young Miss Cohen.”

He laughed at some private joke and set a stack of books on the corner of the Colonel’s desk.

“I thought we might do something a bit different today.”

He motioned for her to sit and produced a well-worn dark green book. Eleonora took it into her hands and examined the spine. It was
The Metamorphoses
by Ovid.

“You know my opinion of novels and love poetry,” the Reverend said. “The sweet, witty soul of Ovid, however, is far beyond reproach. And, if I am not mistaken, I believe he spent the last years of his life in Constanta.”

Still cradling the book, Eleonora opened it to the first page. It was inscribed, in a confident, tilting hand,
To the mellifluous and honey-tongued Jimmy, May 1865, New Haven.

“Yes,” he said, taking the book from her and flipping through it. “A gift from my undergraduate days.”

That afternoon, the Reverend interrupted her silent reading only when he wanted to repeat a line aloud, to hear it roll off his tongue. Pacing back and forth behind her, he followed her index finger under the words, humming absently to himself as she read. Toward the beginning of the story of Calisto, the swish of his trousers went silent. Thinking that perhaps he had a question for her, Eleonora reviewed the previous few lines—
Her vest was gathered up, her hair was tied; / Now in her hand a slender spear she bore, / Now a light quiver on her shoulders wore
—and looked back over her shoulder. The Reverend was lost in thought. His arms were crossed over his chest, his eyes closed and lips slightly parted. After a moment, he opened his eyes and saw that she was looking at him.

“By all means,” he said. “Please, continue.”

Although his behavior was unusual, Eleonora thought nothing of it, and she had no reason to suspect anything was amiss
when the Reverend said he would be staying on after their lesson to write down some thoughts. He often stayed on after their lessons for a few minutes. On these occasions, Eleonora usually read in one of the armchairs on the other side of the room, but that afternoon, because the library was exceedingly stuffy, she decided instead to explore the corridors above the women’s quarters. Owing to their darkness, the corridors stayed much cooler than the rest of the Bey’s house, and she often spent the hottest part of the day wandering through them.

Even after nearly a dozen visits, Eleonora’s heart still flapped and fluttered in her throat as she shuffled along the corridors’ splintered floors. She held the hem of her dress and hunched slightly, the ceiling above her growing steadily lower as she progressed, or so it seemed. In those dark, moldering passageways, dank with the soiled smell of rotting wood, she could not see much farther than her hand in front of her and the walls tapering inward as they rose. She had intended to revisit the small iron door she had discovered on her first visit to the corridors, but seeing the scattered patch of light above the library, she paused. Bending to her knees, Eleonora gripped her fingers through the holes in the latticework screen and looked down on the room she had just left.

Reverend Muehler was seated still at the Colonel’s desk. From this vantage point, she could see the red of the sun on the back of his neck and a small patch of baldness sprouting up about his crown. She couldn’t tell at first what he was doing, but as she leaned forward, she saw that he had opened one of the desk drawers and was furtively rummaging through it. After a short while, he apparently found what he was looking for and slipped it into his briefcase. Eleonora craned her neck to see better. As she did, she was suddenly overcome by an enormous, watery sneeze.

The Reverend looked up and scanned the room. A long silence passed.

“Hello?” he called out. “Miss Cohen?”

Eleonora could hear her blood beating in her ears, could feel her breath caught at the base of her throat. She wanted to run, to leave the scene as quickly as possible, but she knew it was best to stay silent and still. Breathing now through an open mouth, she watched the Reverend stand, call her name once more, and walk around the room, peeking under chairs and tables. When he saw that the room was empty, he grabbed his briefcase and left. Eleonora remained rooted to that same spot for a long while before retracing her steps down the corridor and out of the women’s quarters.

For the rest of that afternoon and all through dinner, Eleonora revisited this incident in her memory, the open drawer, the briefcase, the sound of her own name. There were a number of plausible explanations for what she had seen—Reverend Muehler could have been asked to retrieve a document for the Bey, he might have been looking for a lost pen or a blank piece of paper—but no matter how many possibilities she was able to conjure, she had a difficult time convincing herself of any but the most obvious explanation. The Reverend had stolen from the Bey. From an ethical point of view, the real question was not what had happened but whether she would tell anyone what she had seen. Plato would seem to think she should.
Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
Then again, there was Tertullian.
Truth engenders hatred of truth. As soon as it appears it is the enemy.
She stewed over the question all through dinner, the fireworks, and into her dreams.

When she came downstairs that next morning for breakfast the problem was still with her. As usual, she and the Bey did
not communicate much beyond the requisite salutations and civilities. Monsieur Karom brought her food as usual, and she ate as usual. Still, she could feel it, that question hanging over the room like the silent taxidermied head of a rhinoceros. She hadn’t lied. She hadn’t betrayed anyone’s trust; still, she felt she had done something wrong. Or rather, she had not yet done the right thing. Was there a difference between these two sins? They ate in silence, Eleonora staring down at sliced strawberries bleeding red onto her plate. She needed to say something, to do what was right, but she didn’t want to bear false witness against the Reverend. She pricked a strawberry slice onto her fork and chewed until it dissolved in her mouth.

“Miss Cohen,” said the Bey as he stood from the table. “I won’t be home until later tonight. I have been invited to the house of Haci Bekir.”

Her memory of Haci Bekir, his venal improbity and temper, decided the question once and for all. She removed a piece of paper and a pen from her frock pocket.

Do you have a moment? There is something I would like to ask.

“Of course,” said the Bey, still standing. “What is on your mind?”

Yesterday
, she began after a long hesitation,
I was in the women’s corridors.

She looked up at him, gauging his response. As far as she knew, the Bey had no idea about her explorations. Whether or not he did, he was not in the least taken aback by her revelation.

I found them by accident. I go up there sometimes when I want to be alone. I am sorry if I wasn’t supposed to be there.

“I understand,” he said. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

Eleonora glanced at Monsieur Karom, who was standing with his hands behind his back next to the buffet.

I was up in the corridors. And I saw the Reverend. It was after my lesson and he had stayed on in the library to write down a few of his thoughts. I didn’t mean to be watching him, but when I looked down I saw him going through one of the drawers of the Colonel’s desk.

The Bey tightened his mouth.

“Is that all?”

I can’t be sure, because of the angle, but I think I saw him take something out of the drawer and put it in his briefcase.

“What was it?” the Bey asked, animated in a way she had never before seen. “A pen, a letter, a piece of paper?”

Eleonora felt the first tingling pangs of regret in the tips of her toes. She could see a mountain of unintended consequences at her feet, a mountain crumbling beneath her. For a moment, she wanted to take it all back, but she couldn’t. Now that it had been released into the world, she had to tell the Bey everything.

It looked like a piece of paper. Or maybe a few pieces of paper, a small stack.

Without another word, the Bey strode down the main hall to the library. Eleonora followed a few steps behind.

“Which drawer was it?” he said when they arrived, sitting down at the Colonel’s desk. “Do you remember?”

She pointed at the upper left drawer and the Bey rifled through it. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he removed the drawer’s contents entirely. Placing the papers on the desk, he looked through them one by one. When he reached the bottom of the pile, he let his head sink into his hands.

“I should never have trusted him,” he said. “The Rector of Robert’s College offering to tutor a young girl.”

Eleonora stood at the desk while the Bey mumbled into the cave of his arms. She felt a falling sensation, the world disinte
grating by her own volition. Suddenly, the Bey looked up and, grasping her by the shoulders, looked hard into her eyes.

“Are you absolutely sure you saw him take a piece of paper from this drawer?”

She nodded, avoiding the harsh glow of his eyes.

“This is a very serious matter. If what you said is true, we cannot have him in the house anymore, under any circumstances. Your lessons will have to end and we will have to cut all ties with him.”

The Bey paused and released his grip, seeming to collect himself.

“At the same time, you must take care not to bear false witness. It is, according to Muhammad at least, among the four greatest sins.”

Yes. I am sure.

“Then there is only one course we can take.”

If I may ask
, she wrote tentatively.
What was the piece of paper?

The Bey closed his eyes and took a few long breaths before he removed a blank sheet of stationery and a pen from the top drawer of the desk.

“What the Reverend took was of no great importance,” he said. “What matters is that we cannot trust him.”

With Eleonora looking over his shoulder, the Bey composed a short letter.

The Bey read over the letter and looked to Eleonora for approval before he folded it and placed it in an envelope. Just like that, her lessons were over. She had done the right thing, she knew she had, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right at all. After attempting to read in the library for a few hours, Eleonora ate lunch, wandered back upstairs to her room, and slipped into bed, thinking about General Krzab’s words to his wife on the nature of truth:
A slippery fish, flashing scales in the water and a noble fighter on the line, but dull as lead at the bottom of the boat.
It was true. As much as she admired the idea of truth from a distance, its practice left something to be desired.

Eleonora awoke that next morning to the click of the door and the soft music of Mrs. Damakan humming a familiar melody. Her dreams scurried into the far corners of the room, under furniture and into the cracks between the floorboards. Rubbing her eyes, she slipped out of bed and followed Mrs. Damakan to the bathroom. The air was heavy with condensation and the smell of soap. The morning pressed its face to the small window above the sink like a beggar. Eleonora could feel her skin gather into goose bumps as she slipped into the bath. A shiver jumped across her back and she traced an S on the surface of a square blue tile.

Lifting her arms to the edge of the tub, she leaned her head back and let Mrs. Damakan work her hair into a soapy froth. What she would do now, she had no idea. Without her lessons, the future stretched out like an endless expanse of waves, weeks and months rising and falling in an undifferentiated ocean of time. She didn’t regret what she had done—she had done the right thing—but she mourned the loss of her lessons and feared that perhaps her accusation was false. Perhaps she had imagined the Reverend opening that drawer. Perhaps he was just curious. Relaxing into the motion of the lather, she let her shoulders slump forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. In the murky translucence of the bath, she could see the outlines of her reflection, her flesh scrubbed pink and a tower of soapy white hair as tall as an Austrian cake. She thought of lily pads as she touched her chin to the surface of the water.