Chapter 15: The Scarred Man

Chapter 15: Chapter 15: The Scarred Man

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 30 June 1903

He came on a Tuesday, in the hour after the noon prayer, when the lane was quiet and the shop held only Ayaan and the smell of lentils.

Ayaan had been waiting for two days. He had not known that he was waiting until the bell above the door rang, and his hand stopped on the nib he was sorting.

The man who stepped inside was perhaps thirty, tall and broad through the shoulders, in a dark coat of good cloth and a plain brown fez. A scar ran along the left side of his face from the ear to the corner of the mouth, pale against the skin and cut deep enough that it had drawn the lip slightly upward.

It gave him an expression of mild, permanent amusement. Ayaan understood within a breath that the expression had nothing to do with what the man felt.

"Good afternoon," the man said, and his voice was soft and even. "I am told that I may find paper here."

"Good afternoon, Efendi. We have several kinds."

"So I see."

He did not look at the paper at once.

He looked at the shop, at the shelves behind the counter, at the lockable drawer, at the brass bell, and at the small test shelf that Zeynep had stocked.

He looked at all of it without hurry, as a man looks at a room he intends to describe later.

Then he turned his eyes to Ayaan, and they were calm and dark and entirely without curiosity.

"You are the proprietor?"

"My father is the proprietor, Efendi. I keep the counter."

"A fine counter." He stepped forward and laid a gloved hand on the plank. "My name is Cevdet. I keep the library of a retired pasha in üsküdar, and I am charged with finding paper for the catalogue. It must be white, and strong, and not too dear."

A library. A pasha.

A name that cannot be checked in a single afternoon.

Ayaan set the nibs aside. He felt the old warning rise in him, the one that had served him all spring.

Be dull.

"I have the Austrian, which is very good and costs more. I have the Bohemian, which is a little less fine, and the Italian, which is cheap."

"What would you choose?"

"For a catalogue that is handled often, Efendi, I would choose the Bohemian. It does not tear at the fold, and the price is fair."

Cevdet picked up a sheet and held it to the light from the doorway. His hands were large and steady, and the glove on the left was worn thin at the first two fingers.

"You did not recommend the Austrian."

"The Austrian is better paper, but the pasha’s library will not be made better by it. It will only be made dearer."

"A grocer’s son who thinks of the pasha’s purse." The scarred lip did its small, false amusement. "That is unusual."

"My father says that the customer who is saved money returns, Efendi."

"Your father is a wise man."

"He is a tired one," said Ayaan, "but he is honest."

Cevdet laughed, a short and quiet sound.

He bought six reams of the Bohemian and a box of nibs, and he paid in coin, counting it out with great precision.

When the purchase was wrapped, he lifted it under his arm and inclined his head.

"I will return, young Hassan," he said. "A library is a hungry thing."

Ayaan had not told him his name.

He kept his face calm, and he nodded, and he watched the broad back of the dark coat go out into the lane. Only when the bell had stopped ringing did he realize that his own hand was flat against the plank, pressing hard enough to whiten the fingers.

Zeynep came in from the storeroom, where she had been listening through the crack in the door.

"He knew your name," she said.

"He did."

"It was on no receipt. I made certain." Her voice was very low. "It is on the sign above the door, but the sign says Hassan, grocer. It does not say young."

"No."

"Ayaan." She stood quite still. "That is the man."

"Yes."

"What will you do?"

He looked at the door, where the bell hung motionless.

"I will sell him paper," he said.

II

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 7 July 1903

Hovsep Agopian received him in the small office at the back of the warehouse, with the clock ticking on the wall and a plate of dried figs on the desk.

"A gentleman with a scar," the merchant said, rubbing his chin. "Yes. I know him."

Ayaan kept his hands folded in his lap. He had come with a simple excuse, that a customer had asked him to recommend a supplier for bindings, and he had spoken the question with as little weight as he could.

"He has bought from you before, Efendi?"

"For three years, perhaps four. Paper, boards, binding cloth, and a little leather. He says that he keeps a library for a pasha in üsküdar." Hovsep shrugged his heavy shoulders. "He pays on the day, in coin. He does not haggle. He asks after my family and remembers the names of my children."

"Which pasha?"

"He has never said, and I have never asked. A man who pays on the day does not need to be asked." The merchant studied him for a moment. "Why do you want to know, my boy?"

"He came to my counter, Efendi. I wished to be sure that he was what he said."

"Ah." Hovsep sat back. "That is a sensible caution, and I will tell you what I know. In three years, he has not once been late and not once been rude. I would trust him with my own accounts."

It was the answer that Ayaan had feared, and the one that he had expected.

A man who had bought paper in Sirkeci for three years was not a man who had come into the city in June. The cover was old, and it had been maintained with care, and it would stand up to any question that a boy could ask.

"Does he ask about other customers?"

"Never." Hovsep paused. "No. That is not quite so. He asked about you, last winter, when your first order came through. He said that he had heard of a clever boy who bought by the ream, and that he wished to know whether the paper was good."

Ayaan felt the cold begin in the base of his spine.

"What did you tell him?"

"That the paper was good, and the boy was honest." The merchant’s heavy brow furrowed. "Was that wrong?"

"No, Efendi. It was true."

"Then there is no harm." Hovsep leaned forward and lowered his voice. "But I will say this, because you are young and I am not. If a man asks about you in order to flatter you, he will tell you so. If he asks and says nothing, it is because he intends to keep the answer."

"I understand."

"I hope that you do." The merchant pushed the plate of figs across the desk. "Eat. You have grown thin since the spring."

He walked back to Emin?nü by the long road, along the water, where the ferries moved in slow lines between the shores. He did not hurry.

The man had known his name before the first visit.

He had asked about him in winter, before the guild, before the Administration, before the hayloft and the net.

He had been interested in a boy at a grocer’s counter for the better part of a year, and he had not once shown it.

At the corner of the lane, Ayaan stopped in the shadow of a plane tree and made himself think plainly.

He is not a thief, and he is not a rival. A rival would have done something by now.

He is patient, and his cover is real.

He has been told to find out what I am, and he is in no hurry to learn it.

He did not know whether that made the man more dangerous or less. He knew only that it made him a different kind of danger from the kind that he had prepared for.

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 21 July 1903

The scarred man returned in the third week of July, and this time he did not buy paper.

He came late in the afternoon, when the lane was loud with porters and schoolboys, and he stood for some time at the end of the plank without speaking.

Ayaan was alone. Zeynep had gone to her father’s warehouse, and Mehmet was out on the bridge, buying onions from a boat.

"Good evening, Efendi," said Ayaan.

"Good evening." Cevdet laid a package on the counter. "I have brought you something. I hope that it will not offend you."

"What is it?"

"A catalogue." He undid the string. "It is the catalogue of the pasha’s library, such as it is. I have been working on it for three years, and I find that I do not know whether I am doing it correctly."

Inside lay a bound sheaf of pages, covered in a small, even hand. Each line gave a title, an author, and a number, and the numbers ran in columns down the right-hand margin.

Ayaan did not touch it.

"I am a grocer’s son, Efendi. I do not know about books."

"You know about numbers." The scarred lip curved. "I have been told that you count quickly."

It was said softly, and in the same tone as every other thing he had said. But Ayaan heard what lay under it, and he felt the heat leave his face.

"By whom, Efendi?"

"By a gentleman who deals in these matters." Cevdet’s eyes did not move from his. "He mentioned a sum, I believe, of four thousand kuru? at nine in the hundred. He was much impressed."

The sub-director, the bureau, and the high room with the window onto the courtyard.

So it was not only Münir Bey’s corridor. He has been to the Administration as well.

Ayaan reached for the catalogue slowly, because slowness was what he had decided to be. He turned the pages and ran his eye down the columns, and he saw at once what the man wished him to see.

The numbers were wrong.

They were not wrong by much, and they were not wrong in a pattern that a hasty reader would find. The totals at the foot of each page differed from the sums of their columns by small, irregular amounts.

It was a trap, and it was an honest one.

If he found the errors, he would be a boy who counted quickly. If he did not find them, he would be a boy who did not.

He had to choose, in the space of a single breath, which of the two he would be.

He turned another page, and another. Then he lifted his eyes with an expression that he had practiced in the storeroom mirror for a week.

"I think the figures are well kept, Efendi."

"You see no fault?"

"I see that some of the totals look a little different from what I expected." He frowned and bent over the page again. "But I may have added them wrongly. I am slow with long columns."

For the length of a heartbeat, the scarred man did not move.

Then he smiled, properly, for the first time, and the scar drew his whole face crooked.

"That is a very careful answer," he said.

"I did not wish to insult your work, Efendi."

"You did not." Cevdet took the catalogue back and tied the string around it. "I have a theory about boys who count quickly, young Hassan. They are usually vain, and they are often wrong, and they are never careful. You are not any of those things."

"I am only a grocer’s son."

"So you keep saying." He tucked the package beneath his arm. "I am a collector of libraries. I know a book that has been bound to look like another."

He went to the door and paused with his hand on the frame.

"I will tell the pasha that his catalogue is in good order," he said. "And I will return, because I find that I enjoy a conversation with someone who is careful."

The bell rang once, and he was gone.

Ayaan sat down on the chest, and for some time he did not move at all. His hands were steady, and his breath was even, and he understood that the contest had begun without either of them naming it.

He had not lied, and he had not told the man anything that was false.

He had only been slow, and the man had seen that slowness for exactly what it was.

He is not going to be fooled. I must stop trying to fool him.

I must find something else that he can see.

IV

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 28 July 1903

Zeynep copied the catalogue from memory, which was a thing that Ayaan had not known she could do.

She sat in the storeroom with a candle and a pencil, writing the pages as he recited them, and by the end of an hour she had four sheets covered in neat columns. He had looked at the original for less than a minute, and he had not trusted himself to look longer.

"The errors are not in any order," she said. "I have checked each total against its column, and the differences are two, seven, one, four, and then nine. There is no rule."

"I did not think that there would be."

"Then why did he make them?"

"To see which of two boys I would be." Ayaan sat on a crate and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. "He wished to know whether I would show what I could do, or hide it."

"And you hid it."

"And he saw me hide it." He lowered his hands. "That is the trouble. A boy who truly could not count would have missed the errors and said nothing. A boy who could count and wished to seem otherwise would say what I said."

Zeynep put down the pencil.

"Then the answer you gave was the answer of a boy who is concealing something."

"Yes."

"And he knows it."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a time. The candle flame leaned in a draft from the yard and straightened again.

"Then you must stop trying to look like what you are not," she said. "He is better at seeing that than you are at doing it."

"That is what I concluded."

"Then conclude something else." She turned the paper toward him. "Look at what he is doing. He has not asked you a single question about the Sultan, or the Porte, or foreign money. He has asked about paper, and about counting, and about whether you will say what is true."

"He is measuring honesty."

"He is measuring whether you can be trusted with a small thing." She tilted her head. "I think that the man is deciding what to do with you, and that he has not yet chosen."

Ayaan thought that Zeynep had a way of arriving at the edge of a question before he had seen it.

"I will think on it," he said.

"Think quickly. He will return."

V

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 9 August 1903

"One thing," said Mehmet, "each week. That was the promise."

They sat together in the back of the shop after the shutters had been closed. The lamp stood between them on an upturned crate, and the sacks of lentils threw long shadows across the floor.

"I know, Baba."

"It has been a month, and I have heard six things." His father’s voice was dry. "That the apprentice is dull. That the man at the Feshane is well. That Münir Bey has a cold. That the guild is not asking after you."

"All of those are true."

"I do not doubt it. But I think that you have been choosing the ones that would not trouble me." Mehmet leaned back against a sack. "Tell me about the man with the scar."

Ayaan went still. He had not mentioned him.

"Zeynep," said Mehmet. "She told her father, and her father told me. He was right to. It was not a thing that should have waited."

"I was going to say it tonight."

"Then say it."

He told the whole of it, from the first afternoon to the catalogue, as plainly as he could. His father listened without moving, and when the account was finished, he sat for a long time with his hands on his knees.

"A scar from the ear to the mouth," he said at last.

"Yes, Baba."

"That is not a wound from a brawl. A brawler is cut across the cheek, or the brow, or the back of the hand. A line like that is made by one blow, from someone who meant it."

"A sword?"

"A knife, or a short blade. By a man who was close." Mehmet frowned. "He lived. And he did not make himself ugly by it. Most men would hide a scar like that behind a beard. He lets it be seen."

"Why?"

"Because he wishes you to look at it." His father turned his head slowly toward him. "A man who shows you one thing, so that you do not look at another, is a man who knows how people see."

Ayaan thought about this in silence.

He had thought of the scar as a mark, a way to remember him. He had not thought of it as a tool.

"What should I do, Baba?"

"I do not know." Mehmet gave a rueful, tired smile. "I am a grocer. I have spent my life weighing lentils for people who wished to pay less. I know when I am being measured, and I know that this man is the best that I have seen."

"You are afraid for me."

"I am afraid for all of us. But I am not afraid of him." He lifted the lamp slightly, so that the light fell on his son’s face. "He asked you for a catalogue, and he did not ask for anything else. If he wished you harm, he had a better chance in July, when you were alone. He did not take it."

It was a thought that Ayaan had not allowed himself.

"You think that he is not an enemy."

"I think that he has not decided what you are." Mehmet set the lamp down. "And a man who has not decided is a man who can still be shown."

"Shown what?"

"The truth, my son, in a quantity that he can bear." He rubbed his tired eyes. "I have no better advice. I am sorry."

"It is better than any I have had."

"Then it is worth a month of lentils." The older man almost smiled. "Go home. Your mother has kept your supper."

Ayaan rose and went to the door. Behind him, he heard his father blow out the lamp, and the soft creak of the stool as the old man stood.

"Ayaan."

"Yes, Baba?"

"Whatever he is, he has not hurt you yet. Remember that, on the nights when it is hard to."

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 30 August 1903

The apprentice was gone.

Ayaan noticed it on the last Sunday of August, when he crossed the lane to buy ink and found a different boy behind the bookseller’s counter. The new boy was round-faced and cheerful, and he talked of the heat and the price of paper and did not once look at the grocer’s counter across the way.

He stood in the doorway of the stall afterward, with his purchase in his hand, and considered what it meant.

The watcher has been withdrawn.

It should have been a relief.

It was instead a different kind of weight, because a watcher who is pulled back has not been dismissed. He has been replaced by a method that does not need to stand in a doorway.

He walked home with the sun on his neck. The lane was crowded, and a fishmonger was calling his catch from the corner, and the smell of grilled mackerel hung over the cobbles.

At the shop, Zeynep was waiting with the daily sheet.

"Two customers from the Porte, and the usual boys," she said. "Cevdet Efendi did not come."

"He will."

"Do you wish him to?"

"I wish to know what he intends." Ayaan set the ink on the shelf. "That is not the same as wishing him to come."

She watched him arrange the bottles in their row, and when he had finished, she spoke in a quieter voice.

"I have been thinking about what your father said. That he has not decided what you are."

"Yes."

"Then perhaps we should decide for him." She tapped the sheet. "Not what he sees. What he concludes."

Ayaan turned to her slowly.

"You mean that we must give him a shape to find."

"A grocer’s son, who is clever with sums, and honest, and slow to take offense. Who is loyal to his family and his neighbors, and who has no ambition beyond a shop." She hesitated. "And who loves the Sultan, in the way that every lane in Constantinople loves him."

"That last is true," said Ayaan.

"Is it?"

"I have not told you before." He sat on the chest. "I wish the Empire to endure, Zeynep. I believe that it can be made strong again, and I do not wish to see it broken by the men who profit from its weakness."

She did not look surprised.

"Then we do not need to pretend," she said softly. "We need only to say less."

"That is the whole of the art."

"I know. I learned it from you."

That evening, after the shutters were closed, he opened the blue book to the page headed People and wrote a new line beneath the five names.

C. Efendi, collector of libraries.

Patient, exact, and very observant. Not yet an enemy.

He considered it for a long time, and then he added a second line.

Not yet anything.

He closed the book and went out into the lane to bolt the door from the outside, as he did each night. The street was quiet, and the lamps of the coffee houses were lit at the far end.

As he turned the key, he felt eyes on him.

He did not look around at once. He finished the bolt, tried the door, and put the key in his pocket, and only then did he lift his head.

Across the lane, in the doorway of the bookseller’s stall, a tall man in a dark coat stood with his hands behind his back. The light from the coffee house fell across half of his face, and the pale line of the scar caught it.

He did not move, and he did not hide.

For the space of several breaths, the two of them regarded one another across the cobbles. Then the man raised one hand to the brim of his fez, slowly, in a courteous and entirely correct salute.

Ayaan returned it.

It was the first time that either of them had acknowledged the other without a counter between them, and both of them knew it. The man lowered his hand, turned, and walked away up the lane without hurry.

Ayaan stood alone under the lamp for a long time after he had gone.

He did not feel fear, although he had expected to. He felt instead the sharp, cold attention that came before a difficult sum, when every figure was still unknown and every one mattered.

The scarred man had come into his life as a question.

Ayaan intended to learn what the question was, and he intended to answer it before the man did.