The Oracle of Stamboul (11 page)

As the weeks progressed and still there was no word from Ruxandra, no answer at all, it became clear that Eleonora would be staying with Moncef Bey for an indefinite future. She was not displeased with the idea of continuing on in Stamboul, nor did she ever wish that Ruxandra would come and bring her back home to Constanta, but there was a ticklish sting in her complete lack of reply. Perhaps the Bey was right, perhaps Ruxandra had not received their telegrams; still, Eleonora could not help feeling abandoned, by her aunt, by the very hand of fate. It was as if she had been forgotten entirely, erased from the Book of Life and marooned on an exotic island in the middle of the ocean.

All that being said, Eleonora was very thankful for the Bey’s generosity and she rather came to enjoy life in his house. There was no official agreement, no contract nor any conversation about the terms of their arrangement, just that she was welcome to stay as long as she pleased. They had an amicable rapport, though for the most part they each attended to their own affairs. She didn’t ask too many questions and neither did he. After breakfast each morning, the Bey left the house and usually didn’t return until later that evening. They ate dinner together at least three times a week. On nights that the Bey had dinner plans outside the house, Monsieur Karom brought a cold meal up to Eleonora’s room, which she ate alone before snuffing out her lamp and retiring for the night.

During this period, Eleonora’s closest and most constant companion was Mrs. Damakan. In addition to their morning baths, the handmaid checked on her throughout the day to see if there was anything she needed. She brought up books and tea, extra blankets and little treats from the kitchen. More than once, Eleonora awoke from a nap to find the old woman seated in the chair next to her bed. One such afternoon, she awoke to Mrs. Damakan humming a soft and distant melody.

“I used to sing that to you,” she said, with a small smile.

Mrs. Damakan had stopped humming, but Eleonora could still feel the melody tugging at the frayed edges of her memory. Then it disappeared, vanished like a gull in thick fog.

A dull iron bell rang out from the church tower above Robert’s College, rousing Reverend James Muehler from his afternoon nap as it reverberated through the walls of the rectory. It was the first dinner bell, three short tolls signifying that lower school students should be in or on their way to the cafeteria. The Reverend raised his jaw onto the cold leather of the armchair he had fallen asleep in and tried to summon the details of his plan for the evening. He was dining at Moncef Bey’s, that much he remembered, but he couldn’t recall when. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stood, crossed the stone floor of his study, and lowered himself into his desk chair. He shuffled through his papers for a few moments before coming upon the Bey’s note.

Half past seven was rather early for dinner, but there was little he could do to change that now. Moistening the tips of his index and middle fingers, Reverend Muehler held the note up to the yellow wash of light emanating from his desk lamp and examined it more closely. The watermark was from a posh stationer in Rome but, although the note had been composed quite recently, the paper itself was yellow at the edges. Perhaps the Bey was less comfortable than generally supposed. In any case, the invitation was an excellent stroke of luck. With ever more outrageous rumors about the cause of the boat accident swirling through the city, his handlers were becoming increasingly agitated in their desire for intelligence of any sort. The Department of War and the Grand Vizier would both be greatly pleased to have a report on Moncef Bey’s domestic circumstances, and James sorely needed a success on both fronts. He did not suspect the Bey of anything more than organizing his reading groups, of riling up the intellectual classes with impassioned discourses on Rousseau, but with pressure mounting from the Americans as well as the Ottomans, even the most benign stones could use turning over.

After staring at the note a few minutes longer, the Reverend placed it aside and began leafing through a pile of documents he had acquired a few evenings previous at a dinner party hosted by the German Admiral Krupp. They did not appear to be particularly significant: a few letters, a deed for a piece of land outside of Stuttgart, and some notes in the margin of a newspaper. Still, seeing as his German was rather spotty, the Reverend thought it best to go over them with a dictionary in hand before they were discarded. One never knew in such matters. The notes in the margin of a newspaper article might allude to a secret naval training program or plans for expansion of the railroads.

The Reverend exhaled and cracked his neck to either side. In addition to this little translation project and to his regular responsibilities at Robert’s, a number of inessential tasks needed tending to in the near term. His study was a mess, his books were still unalphabetized, and his desk was blanketed with at least a dozen stacks of paper, each of which warranted a careful going through. Dipping his pen in the inkstand at the top of the desk, he composed a list of tasks to accomplish within the next three days. Satisfied with his progress, he laid the list in the middle of his desk and retired to prepare himself for dinner.

When Reverend Muehler set out finally on his way, the sun was dipping orange into a convocation of pine trees behind Le Petit Champs du Mort. Pausing at the lip of a ridge overlooking the Bosporus, he shielded his eyes from the glare of the setting sun and watched a German armored frigate inching toward the Sea of Marmara. Just below him, peeking out from under the ridge, was the rubblous structure of Rumelihisari, the tower from which Mehmet Pasha had laid siege to Stamboul more than four centuries previous. The trustees of Robert’s College had chosen the location of their school well. Although they were driven, as the charter of the college grandly stated,
to teach the young men of the Ottoman Empire, instruct them in the ways of the modern world
, it was no secret that many of Robert’s American staff reported regularly to the Department of War. And many of them, including himself, owed their positions to connections in the department. To the Reverend’s mind, this was not a conflict of interests or intentions. If one could serve one’s own country while at the same time educating the children of another, well then, all the better. His only gripe was that his intelligence-gathering drew him away sometimes from what he saw as his primary responsibility as Rector of the college.

Reverend Muehler’s path snaked down the hill through an ancient graveyard disordered by gravity. It was a macabre sight, the narrow gravestones incomprehensible with age and each topped with a stone cast of the proprietor’s turban or fez. Trying his best not to imagine the bones beneath his feet, or the flesh those bones once supported, he held his breath and descended the path on his heels. As James emerged from under the shadow of the graveyard, Moncef Bey’s house came into view. It was a grand old waterfront behemoth painted the color of egg yolk. He had never been inside the house, but he had noticed it often from afar. For some vagary of memory, the sight of it reminded him always of the painted elephant he had ridden once in Calcutta. Such is the wonder of the mind.

As he approached, Reverend Muehler observed that the house was garlanded with a swirl of purple hoopoes nearly identical in coloration and number to the flock he had noticed on the pier that morning before the accident. He had seen this stripe of hoopoe before then even, he was sure of it, though he couldn’t remember where. Near the foot of the driveway, the Reverend paused to contemplate the flock and to catch his breath. Wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, he glanced at the battered red-and-gold book he had decided at the last moment to bring with him, a translated reader of Herodotus. As he inspected the inside cover of the book, a dog barked and he started. It was a private moment, one he would not have given a second thought to had he not looked up just then and seen Eleonora watching him from her window. When she saw that he saw her, she did not wave or smile, nor did she pull away, nor pretend she had been looking elsewhere. She just continued staring with that same plain and vacant gaze. A curious child, she was. They regarded each other for a long while before the Reverend turned to knock at the front door.

“Welcome,” said the butler. “Reverend Muehler, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“If you please,” the butler said, holding the door open. “I will alert Moncef Bey that you have arrived.”

“That would be excellent.”

In spite of its garish exterior, the antechamber of the Bey’s house was rather tastefully decorated, a careful melding of Louis XVI and classical Ottoman styles. The Reverend adjusted his necktie and peered down the main hallway. A better spy would seize this opportunity to rifle through a few drawers or at least to examine the lock on the front door. He was not, however, a very good spy. Glancing about, he made a halfhearted attempt to poke through a pile of cards on the visiting table. Nothing of interest there, though one couldn’t expect a covert operative to leave his calling card. When the Reverend looked up again, Eleonora was standing at the top of the staircase, regarding him with that same empty and vaguely accusatory gaze. Even from a distance, he could see her face was drawn and pale, her eyes sunk into their cavities and tinged with red. Holding a pen and a piece of paper in her right hand, she descended the stairs with the nervous care of an old woman.

Reverend Muehler took a step toward the base of the staircase and made a sympathetic expression of his face.

“I was so sorry to hear about your father.”

Eleonora’s chin shook slightly, but she did not say anything in response.

“He was an honest man,” the Reverend continued. “A good man, and he cared about you very much.”

She touched her lips with the tip of her finger and shook her head.

“Miss Cohen has not spoken since the crash.”

Reverend Muehler turned and saw the Bey in the mouth of the grand hallway.

“When she wants to express something she writes it on a sheet of paper.”

“Yes,” the Reverend said. “Very well.”

“It is not an ideal situation, but she is rather unwilling to speak.”

They both glanced at Eleonora, who was still standing at the base of the stairs, then the Bey continued.

“Here, let me show you to the dining room.”

Seating himself to the left of his host and across the table from Eleonora, the Reverend attempted to continue their conversation.

“You can write, then?” he asked her, spreading his napkin in his lap. “That is quite impressive. Who taught you to write?”

Eleonora uncapped her pen and wrote two words across the top of the page, which she turned toward the Reverend so he could read them.

My father.

“I see,” he said, flattening the napkin again. “Of course, that would make sense.”

Before the Reverend could ask any further questions, Monsieur Karom appeared with three silver trays and placed one in front of each of them. Dinner that evening was roast lamb and carrots served on a bed of sweet bulgur. In spite of the somewhat taciturn company, the dinner itself was rather good. The lamb was perfectly cooked, charred along the edges with a touch of blood in the middle, the carrots as soft as summer fruit, and the bulgur flavored with orange blossom water. The only thing missing was conversation. Aside from the requisite compliments
and requests to pass the salt, they ate in silence, silverware clinking as the Reverend and Bey tucked into their meals.

“These are interesting times,” said the Reverend, attempting to draw his host out of his shell.

“Indeed.”

“I have not seen such commotion and disorder since our Civil War. Mahdists, Serbs, Armenians, Jews, all clamoring for who knows what. The whole world seems to be clamoring.”

The Bey nodded philosophically.

“Clamor can be an end unto itself,” he said.

“Some would say a new day is dawning.”

“Some would say many things.”

The Reverend cut off a piece of lamb and chewed it carefully before trying again to bait his host.

“There are those who would say that a fundamental reordering of the political system will soon be upon us.”

The Bey smiled politely, but he did not bite. It was clear he did not want to engage in a political discussion, and so James turned his attention to Eleonora.

“If I remember correctly,” he said, “you are quite the reader. Tell me about one of the books you’ve read recently.”

Eleonora squirmed, but as he suspected, she was too polite not to respond.

I have been rereading
The Hourglass.

“Rereading?”

Yes.

“Because you didn’t fully understand it the first time?”

No
, she wrote. Then, sensing that this was too curt of a response for their guest, she added:
There were some words I didn’t understand, but I can usually make them out from the context.

The Reverend mulled over this response and, instead of con
tinuing with his original line of questioning, he brought out his old Herodotus reader. Choosing a short excerpt, he handed the book across the table to Eleonora.

“Would you mind reading that?” he said, pointing to the start of the passage.

She nodded, as if this were a perfectly normal dinnertime pursuit, and bent over the page, her finger following along under the words. Halfway through the passage, she stopped.

What does he mean when he says they say the earth and sky are full of feathers?

Reverend Muehler reached across the table and took the book from her, reading aloud for the benefit of his host.

“‘Above and north of the neighbors of their country no one (they say) can see or travel further, because of showers of feathers; for earth and sky are full of feathers, and these hinder sight.’”

It was a strange passage, probably not the best to test a young student’s comprehension, but it was what he had chosen. He flipped forward a few pages to where Herodotus explains the feathers.

“Here is the answer,” he said, and read aloud again: “‘Regarding the feathers of which the Scythians say that the air is full, so thickly that no one can see or traverse the land beyond, I have this opinion. North of that country snow falls continually, though less in summer than in winter, as is to be expected. Whoever has seen snow falling thickly near him knows himself my meaning; for snow is like feathers. I think therefore that in this story of feathers the Scythians and their neighbors only speak of snow figuratively. So, then, I have spoken of those parts that are said to be most distant.’”

He handed the book back to her and she read the new passage to herself before responding.

Why would he wait so many pages before telling us the feathers are snow? It doesn’t make any sense.

“You’re right,” the Reverend conceded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

James leaned his silverware on the edge of his plate. She was a classic savant, in the mold of Lucretius and Mendelssohn, but there was something else about her as well, a certain nobility of presence, that haunted look combined with an almost total lack of self-reflection, or so it seemed. In any case, the question was not whether she was an extraordinary child. The question was what to do with her.

Unfortunately, Stamboul was not the best soil for a mind like hers. Robert’s College was out of the question, for a number of reasons. And the girls’ schools in Stamboul were far too unserious. The best approach would probably be to hire a private tutor, someone to teach her Greek and Latin, rhetoric, philosophy, and history. But again, the private tutors in Stamboul were all rather bad. He thought on it awhile before he realized the perfect solution. Of course. He would offer to tutor her himself. It would be intriguing to observe the spin and whir of her intellect at work. A study of her lexical acquisition alone would be worthy of a monograph. And his handlers would surely be glad for any situation that granted him regular access to Moncef Bey’s house.