The Sultan of Byzantium (29 page)

‘Friends, my goal is to double Monodia’s bottom line in seven years – that would be eleven billion pounds! To do that we need to increase corporate profits by one hundred percent each year. An institution with a cash value like ours can reach that goal in the medium term. Of course we’ll apply all our profits to the service of the Byzantine cause. This is my new mission for Monodia. We could begin by channeling our resources to the restoration of historical treasures. Nor should people and institutions who deserve to be penalized be forgotten. This sentence does not imply terrorist activity, by the way.

‘We’ve got time to make a proper list, but we shouldn’t sit still in the meantime. Let me mention my embarrassment, for example, over the so-called memorial to Constantine XI in Athens, stuck behind a huge statue of a bishop like a toy Sancho Panza.’

I continued with a certain amount of Nomo-bashing, but gently. Finally I stood and said, ‘If there is no objection, the meeting is adjourned.’

Photos of the properties Monodia owned in partnership with various entities covered the conference-room walls like a spider web. I observed those tributes to ugliness with a sour expression. I used my notes in the Board of Directors meeting to make the directors and managers sweat. In the end it was decided to set up a division for buying and selling mutual bonds, investment funds and mining shares. On top of everything else, Monodia’s interior décor was to be modernized, subject to my approval.

The time came for my salary to be fixed. Torosidis, who as an administrator and deputy chairman came to work every day, took home thirty thousand pounds. Ninis and Moras got fifteen thousand each. In addition they all received shares of the annual net profit. I cut my salary from ninety thousand pounds to half of that. ‘And I wouldn’t even take that much,’ I said, ‘if I weren’t spending a good deal of it on scholarships for poor children.’ I closed the meeting with a decision to have the third-quarter meeting, scheduled for November 22, at the Four Seasons Hotel, which stood on the foundations of the Great Palace of Byzantium.

I invited Nomo to dinner at The Providores. I planned not to ask personal questions on this night of socializing, but I couldn’t resist the urge to ask Torosidis, ‘Pappas, what part of Istanbul do you come from?’ My right arm, it turned out, was the only son of a Fener priest. To ask how he ended up at Oxford after the Fener Greek High School would have been superfluous.

*

By the time I boarded the plane to Stockholm, it felt as if I’d aged five years, but I had gained greatly in self-confidence. Mistral thought Monodia was a mid-level investment firm in which one of my grandfather’s friends was a partner. When I informed her that I was the Chairman of the Board, she said, ‘Ah, now I see the reason for your squared-up shoulders.’

‘If you know a beauty ready to live in Byzantium, I’ll propose to her,’ I said.

‘I know a spinster ready to go anywhere on earth with you,’ she replied. Then she phoned Costas of Edremit and said, ‘Papa! Halâs just proposed to me. What’s become of your idea that a Turk wouldn’t want an infertile woman?’

I’d found the love of my life, but evidently I wasn’t to discover the joys of fatherhood. It was a dilemma worthy of a Byzantine aristocrat. Maybe destiny didn’t want to enrich history with another Byzantine Sultan after me.

We planned to marry at the end of the fall semester. Mistral would continue her academic career at an Istanbul university, and I would find some kind of keeping-up-appearances job. I called my mother and Hayal, who were not surprised at the news. Akile said, ‘You’ll have to give the good news to your grandmother yourself, because she’ll kill me if I tell her.’ And Hayal said, ‘Big brother, tell Mistral to wear flat shoes to the wedding – she’s not shorter than you.’

In Istanbul I was immediately welcomed into my grandmother’s presence. When I broke the news, she started rapidly thumbing her prayer beads. Her mind was troubled by a more prominent nuisance than the infertility of the bridal candidate.

‘Halâs, my son, take that blonde girl to the imam before you marry her. Let her pick a holy name like Emine or Ayşe and convert to Islam.’

‘Grandma,’ I said. ‘I proposed to Mistral and didn’t ask her to do anything beyond moving to Istanbul. Maybe she’ll be impressed by you and volunteer to convert, who knows?’

‘Son of a worthless American, do you think you’re pulling the wool over a child’s eyes?’ she said, and threw her prayer beads at me. I caught them in mid-air and we started laughing. I hugged her on the way out and kissed her on the cheek. It smelled of rose water.

I woke at dawn in orgasmic delight. In my dream Nomo and I had mounted the four horses stolen by the Venetians from Constantinople, and were riding back to Istanbul on air. I was in the front and wearing a purple caftan. Our laughter mingled with the joyful neighing of the Quadriga. The brass plate left behind under the empty niche in the Church of San Marco said, ‘Home, Sweet Home.’

I went into the living room to watch the movement of dawn into daylight. The ancient Galata wind and the seagulls all hushed; the
ezan
was about to issue from the city’s 3000 mosques. I went into the study and took my fanciest Venetian notebook from the desk drawer. I wrote ‘B. Homework’ on the first page and burst into laughter. On the back of the page I drew a chessboard. Over it I wrote, in the favorite poly-alphabetic code of the fifteenth-century Italian city-states, ‘Saving the Quadriga’. Had I discovered the pleasure of composing puzzles instead of solving them? I went back to bed. When I was a child, if I couldn’t sleep I used to recite three little nonsense prayers my grandmother gave me to shut my eyes. This time it was lines from Karacaoğlan that sprang to my lips:

Square in the heart of her fair breast

Lies the sacred fount of Zemzem

If I drink from it they’ll kill me

And if I don’t, I’ll die.

(March 2009 – July 2010)

SELÇUK ALTUN was born in Artvin, Turkey, in 1950. He is a retired banking executive, a bibliophile and philanthropist. His novels,
Songs My Mother Never Taught Me
and
Many and Many a Year Ago
, were listed amongst the top one hundred foreign crime fiction by the International Association of Crime Writers. He lives in Istanbul.

First English edition published 2012 by Telegram

1

Copyright © Selçuk Altun 2012
Translation © Clifford Endres and Selhan Endres 2012

ISBN
978 1 84659 148 8
eISBN
978 1 84659 150 1

Published in Turkey as
Bizans Sultani
by Sel Yayincilik, 2011

The right of Selçuk Altun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

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