Chapter 19: The Cost of Ambition

Chapter 19: Chapter 19: The Cost of Ambition

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 30 January 1904

The man in the lane wore a good gray overcoat and a fez of the finest felt, and he carried a cane that he did not need.

He bowed to Ayaan with exact courtesy, and he did not offer his name until it was asked.

"Tevfik Efendi, secretary of the Guild of Stationers." His smile was wide and entirely without warmth. "I have the honor of speaking with the proprietor’s son?"

"You do, Efendi. My father is at the door behind me, if you wish to speak with him."

"I would rather speak with you." Tevfik looked past him into the shop, at the shelf where the gray ledgers stood in a neat row. "It was you who devised these, I understand."

"A teacher devised them. I only arranged for them to be made."

"You are modest. It is an admirable quality in the young, and a rare one." He tapped the cane lightly on the cobbles. "Let me be plain, since the hour is late. This is a grocer’s shop."

"It has been one for twenty years."

"And yet it sells paper, ink, nibs, and now bound books of accounts at a price that is a third lower than any stationer in the city." The smile did not move. "The guild has rules about such things, young Hassan. A man who sells stationery must be registered as a stationer, and he must pay the dues, and he must sell at the price that the members have agreed."

Ayaan felt Mehmet move behind him, and he did not turn.

"I did not know of the rule, Efendi."

"Ignorance is not a defense, but it is a courtesy that we are willing to extend." Tevfik drew a folded paper from his coat and held it up without offering it. "The fine is forty kuru? for each month of the offense. It comes to a little under three lira, and the guild would forgive it entirely if the shop closed its stationery shelf."

"Closed it entirely?"

"Or if it sold only at the guild’s price, which is eighteen kuru? for a ledger of this kind." The cane tapped again. "I am not unreasonable. I only wish the matter to be orderly."

Ayaan studied the man’s hands. They were smooth and unmarked, the hands of someone who had not weighed or carried or counted anything in a long time.

"May I see the rules in writing, Efendi?"

"They are well known."

"I am sure that they are. But I would like to read them, so that I do not make the mistake again." He kept his voice level, and he kept his hands at his sides. "I will answer you within seven days."

Tevfik considered this, and for a moment the smile thinned.

"That is a sensible request," he said. "I will send the rules in the morning."

He turned to go, and then he paused with one foot on the step.

"A word of friendship, since we are neighbors. Your printer is in Balat, I believe, and he is a Jew who prints in several languages." He said it pleasantly, as a man mentions the weather. "The Directorate of the Press is very strict about anything bound and sold. I would not wish a misunderstanding."

The man walked away up the lane with his cane tapping on the stones, and Ayaan stood motionless in the doorway until the sound had faded.

His face was hot, and his hands were not steady.

It was not fear, or not only fear. It was anger of a kind that he had not felt in this life, sharp and clean and almost pleasant, and it told him in great detail what he might do.

I know where his shop is. I know what he pays his clerks, and what he does not.

I could have him ruined within a month.

He drew a slow breath, and then another.

"Ayaan," said his father, very quietly, from behind him.

"Yes, Baba."

"Whatever you are thinking, do not do it tonight."

II

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 31 January 1904

Mehmet sat at the kitchen table in the morning light with the paper that Tevfik’s messenger had delivered. The rules of the guild ran to six pages, written in a clerk’s cramped hand and stamped at the foot with a green seal.

"It is all here," he said. "The registration fee, the monthly dues, the fixed prices, and the clause about unregistered sellers."

"They fix the prices."

"They fix the price of ledgers, and of ink, and of paper by the ream." Mehmet turned a page. "It has been so for a hundred years."

"To protect the lazy members from the quick ones."

"To protect the members, certainly. Whether they are lazy is another matter."

Ayaan paced the length of the room and back. He had slept little, and what sleep he had found was full of arguments in which he said the right things in the right order. In each of them, Tevfik Efendi lost, and in each of them Ayaan woke feeling worse.

"They are stealing the market from the men who would serve it, Baba. A porter who cannot pay eighteen kuru? for a ledger will keep no accounts at all, and the guild would rather that than see him paid honestly for twelve."

"That is true."

"Then why should I pay them anything?"

"Because that is also true." His father set down the page and folded his hands. "Both things are true, my son. The guild is a poor institution, and the guild has power. A man who ignores it does not defeat it. He meets it in a bad hour."

"He might defeat it by exposing it."

"With what?"

Ayaan stopped pacing. He had been about to answer, and the answer was in his mind in full detail, and he understood what it would do to him.

He knew a great deal. He knew that Tevfik’s brother-in-law had borrowed from a moneylender in Galata and could not repay. He knew that the guild’s accounts had not been audited in six years. He knew these things because he listened, and because he forgot nothing.

None of it was secret to anyone who looked. All of it could be turned into a weapon.

That is what a hafiye does.

He sat down across from his father.

"I was going to say that I could expose his debts," he said. "And I understood what I was saying while I said it."

"What did you understand?"

"That I would become the man I am afraid of." He rubbed his eyes. "I would be collecting what people hide and using it to make them obey. It is a method, and it works, and it would make me no better than the man who watches me."

Mehmet did not smile, but something in his face eased.

"I am a grocer," he said. "I know very little of such matters. But I have found that the anger which tells you what to do is rarely the same as the judgment which tells you what is wise."

"Then how does a man tell them apart?"

"He waits a day, and he asks what he would want to have done in a year." Mehmet rose and laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. "Take the day, Ayaan. The seven days are for a reason."

That evening, Ayaan took a clean sheet of paper and drew a line down the middle. On the left, he wrote what he felt, in plain words, without softening any of it.

I am furious. I wish to hurt him. I wish to be seen to be stronger.

On the right, he wrote what was true.

The guild is within its rights. My shop sells stationery without registration. The printer is exposed, and the printer is more important than my pride.

He read the two columns until the lamp burned low. Then he folded the left-hand half under and tore it away, and he held it to the flame until it was ash.

III

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 4 February 1904

"You are in a difficult position," said Hovsep Agopian, "and I will tell you at once that I cannot take your side."

He said it kindly, over a plate of dried apricots, and Ayaan was grateful for the honesty.

"I understand, Efendi. You sell paper to the guild."

"I sell paper to half its members, and the head of the guild buys from me by the hundred reams." The merchant spread his hands. "If I am seen to be your friend against them, my own shelves will begin to empty. I am not proud of it. I only describe it."

"I did not come to ask for your side."

"What did you come to ask?"

"Who they are." Ayaan leaned forward. "I know Tevfik Efendi. I do not know the man who leads him."

Hovsep gazed at the ceiling and was silent for some time.

"Hac? Zeki Efendi is seventy-one," he said at last. "He has kept a stationer’s shop in the row at Beyaz?t for fifty years, and his father kept it before him. He is proud, and he is honest, and he is tired."

"And Tevfik?"

"Is forty, and ambitious, and has made himself secretary because the old man cannot manage the books." The merchant picked up an apricot and turned it over. "He is the one who wishes to be rid of you. The old man would not have sent him."

"Why not?"

"Because the old man has never in his life wished to be rid of anyone who paid his dues." Hovsep ate the apricot. "He wishes to be paid, and to be respected, and to die with the guild intact. Tevfik wishes to be the guild. These are not the same."

Ayaan considered this, and the shape of a plan began to appear.

"You are suggesting that I speak to the old man."

"I am suggesting nothing. I am telling you that the old man holds the seal, and that the secretary only holds the pen." Hovsep smiled slightly. "A boy who is clever enough to sell ledgers is clever enough to know the difference."

"What would the old man wish to hear?"

"That the guild is honored, and that its rules are respected, and that a young man has come to learn from it." The merchant looked at him with some severity. "And you must mean it, Ayaan. He will know if you do not. He has been lied to by experts."

"I will mean it."

"Then take him a gift." Hovsep rose and went to a shelf. "Not a bribe, for he would be insulted. But a good ream of the Austrian paper, from the shipment that I did not offer you in the spring."

"That is generous."

"It is not generous. It is a loan against your future custom." The merchant placed the paper in his hands, and it was heavier than Ayaan had expected. "Go carefully, my boy. It is a good deal harder to make a friend than to win an argument."

IV

Constantinople, Beyaz?t — 8 February 1904

The stationers’ row lay in the shadow of the old mosque, a line of narrow shops with wooden fronts and brass scales hanging above the doors. In the third from the end, an old man sat behind a counter piled with paper, reading a book through a magnifying glass.

He did not look up when the bell rang.

"If you are the grocer’s boy, you may wait," said Hac? Zeki Efendi. "I am at a difficult passage."

Ayaan waited. He stood with the ream of Austrian paper held in both arms, and he counted the clocks in the shop, which was a habit of his when he was anxious and a useful one when he wished to appear calm. There were four, and none of them told the same hour.

After some time, the old man put down the glass and removed his spectacles.

"I have been reading the same page of Sa’di for a week," he said. "I find that my eyes are not what they were. What have you brought me?"

"Paper, Efendi. A small gift, to say that I am sorry for the trouble."

"Trouble." The old man’s mouth twitched. "Is that what it is?"

"I have sold stationery without joining the guild. It was done in ignorance, but it was done." Ayaan set the ream on the counter. "I have come to register, and to pay what is owed, and to ask whether the guild would consider a proposal."

Hac? Zeki looked at the paper, and then at the boy, and then at the paper again.

"Tevfik told me that you were insolent."

"I hope that I was not, Efendi."

"He also told me that you wished to destroy us." The old man leaned back. "Do you wish to destroy us?"

"No, Efendi. I wish to sell ledgers to people who cannot afford yours."

"Hm." It was a long, considering sound. "Speak."

"The ledger is not a rival to what your members sell. It is for the porter, the water carrier, and the woman with the tray, and they would never walk into a stationer’s shop." Ayaan kept his voice even. "I would pay the registration fee and the dues. I would also sell the ledgers to the guild at cost, and your members could stock them on their own shelves at whatever price they chose."

The old man was silent.

"They would earn more from each one than I do," Ayaan went on. "In return, I ask only that my own shelf remain, and that the guild’s seal appear on the back cover beside the printer’s."

"You would give up your margin."

"I would give up the margin on the first thousand. After that, we should speak again." He met the old man’s eyes. "A guild that sells my ledgers will sell more of them than I can, Efendi. I do not mind sharing a larger sum."

Hac? Zeki laughed, a dry, short sound.

"Fifty years I have sat in this shop," he said, "and in all that time, no one has come to the guild to offer to give anything up." He shook his head slowly. "They come to ask for exceptions, and they come to ask for favors, and they come to complain of Tevfik. You are the first to come and sit."

"I am not sitting, Efendi. I am standing."

"So you are. Sit." The old man gestured at a stool. "Tell me about the schoolmaster who devised the book."

They spoke for an hour. When the call to the afternoon prayer sounded from the mosque, Hac? Zeki had agreed to the registration, the dues, and a trial of two hundred ledgers on the members’ shelves.

At the door, the old man laid a thin, spotted hand on Ayaan’s arm.

"Tevfik will not forgive this," he said quietly. "He wished for a fine, and an apology, and a closed shelf. You have given me a better thing, and he will remember who gave it."

"I know, Efendi."

"I think that you do." The hand tightened briefly. "Be careful. A boy who makes a friend of the head makes an enemy of the secretary, and the secretary has a very long memory."

V

Constantinople, Balat — 16 February 1904

The inspector from the Directorate of the Press arrived at the house of Yitzhak Behar at nine in the morning, with two clerks and a leather case.

Moiz ran the whole way to Emin?nü to tell them. He reached the shop without his cap, with ink on his sleeves, and he could not speak for a full minute.

"They are going through the cases," he gasped. "Every drawer, every type, every sheet. My grandfather is sitting in his chair and saying nothing, and his face is gray."

Ayaan was already reaching for his coat.

"Zeynep, take the shop," he said. "Baba, if anyone comes asking, I am at Balat on a matter of paper."

"Ayaan." Mehmet’s voice was low. "Be careful what you say to the inspector."

"I will say only what is true."

They took the ferry across the Horn, and Moiz stood at the rail the whole way with his fists clenched. At the quay in Balat, a small crowd had gathered in the lane, and the shutters on the street had all been closed.

Inside the printing house, the three presses stood idle, and every drawer of type had been pulled out and set upon the floor. At the long table, a heavy man in a black frock coat was turning over sheets of paper one by one.

"Inspector Rü?dü Bey," said Behar, from his chair. His voice was faint, and he was gripping the arm of it. "This is the young man whose ledgers we have been making."

The inspector looked up without interest.

"You are the proprietor?"

"My father is the proprietor, Bey. I am his son."

"A child." He lifted a ledger from the table and opened it. "These are printed in Turkish and in French. Has the text been submitted to the Directorate?"

"Only the headings, Bey, and the instructions on the second page." Ayaan stood very straight. "I did not know that they required submission. I believed that a ruled form needed no license."

"A ruled form does not. A ruled form with a printed title and a page of instructions is a book, and a book requires approval." The inspector’s tone was bored and precise. "I have found seventeen sheets of this book on the premises, and I find no stamp."

It was exactly the point that Tevfik had made, and Ayaan felt the cold of it.

He could see two roads. One was a small payment, in a folded paper, offered quietly to one of the clerks. It was done every day, in every office in the city, and it would have ended the matter in a quarter of an hour.

The other was the slow road, and it was the one that his father would have taken.

"Bey," he said. "I wish to submit the text now, in the proper form, and to pay whatever the law requires."

The inspector paused, and the nearest clerk looked up.

"That will take two weeks."

"I understand."

"There will be a fine, for printing unlicensed matter. Five lira."

"I will pay it today."

"It is a great deal of money for a grocer’s son."

"It is less than the cost of doing it wrongly, Bey." Ayaan did not look at the old printer. "May I ask that the fine be charged to me, and not to the press? The error was mine."

For a long moment, Rü?dü Bey said nothing. He looked at the boy, and at the idle presses, and at the old man in the chair.

"I have not been asked that before," he said. "Very well. Submit the text, and bring the fine to the Directorate by Friday. The press may resume printing for commercial forms, and for nothing else."

He closed his case and left, and the clerks followed. When the door had shut behind them, Yitzhak Behar put his face in his hands.

"Five lira," whispered Moiz. "That is most of what we earned this month."

"It is." Ayaan sat down on a stool, because his knees had suddenly become unreliable. "And two weeks without ledgers, and a stain on the press that will remain in the Directorate’s files."

"Then why did you pay it?"

"Because the alternative was to pay the same price later, and more." He looked at the old man. "Efendi, I am sorry. I should have asked about the license before I came to you."

Behar lowered his hands. His eyes were wet, but his voice was firm.

"Young Hassan," he said. "Forty years I have printed, and I have been fined, and closed, and threatened. Not once has anyone said that it was his error and offered to pay."

"It was my error."

"It was the secretary’s malice." The old man shook his head. "But I will accept your apology, because you made it, and I will not forget that you made it."

VI

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 28 February 1904

The reckoning of the month lay on the storeroom crate in Zeynep’s even hand.

Five lira for the fine, and three for the registration. Two weeks of lost sales, which she had estimated at nine. A reduced margin on the first two hundred ledgers, which went to the guild’s shelves. In the right-hand column, only one entry stood, and it was a large one.

Guild seal. Two hundred ledgers placed. Hac? Zeki Efendi’s goodwill.

"We lost money this month," said Zeynep.

"Yes."

"We will not make it back before April."

"No."

"And we have an enemy who was not there in January." She laid the pencil down. "Ayaan, I wish to ask you something, and I wish you to answer without thinking."

"Ask."

"Would you do it again?"

"Yes," he said, at once.

"Even knowing the cost?"

"Especially knowing the cost." He sat down on the sack across from her. "I have been thinking about it for three weeks. In every history that I have read, a hundred ambitions ended because a man could not tell the difference between what he felt and what he should do."

She raised an eyebrow slightly, since he had said it with more force than the matter seemed to need.

"Tevfik wished to be afraid of me," he said. "That would have been easy. He would have wanted a fight, and I could have given him one, and I would have been the one who fought. That is what the anger wanted."

"And what did the strategy want?"

"A guild that sells my ledgers, a printer who trusts me, and an old man who will speak well of the shop in the places that matter." He counted them on his fingers. "None of it required that Tevfik lose."

"He will not thank you for that."

"He does not need to. He needs only to be unable to do me harm." Ayaan lowered his hand. "I think that is the whole art, Zeynep. To pay the cost that buys the lasting thing, and to refuse the cost that only buys the satisfaction."

She was quiet for a time, and the lamp flame bent in a draft from the yard and straightened.

"Your father asked me last week whether you were sleeping," she said. "I told him that you were not."

"I am now."

"I know." She smiled. "I have seen the lamp go out at a reasonable hour."

Ayaan looked at her across the crate. The light fell across her face and the open page, and the pencil rested in her fingers, quite still.

He noticed a feeling that he could not yet name, and he did not try. It was warm, and it was steady, and it did not ask to be understood.

"There is one more matter," said Zeynep, taking up the page. "The sign."

"What sign?"

"Your father has had a new one painted. He told me not to tell you until it was hung."

They went out together into the lane, where the dusk was falling and the lamps of the coffee houses were being lit. Above the shop door, newly painted in clear black letters on a white board, a line of script had been added beneath the old one.

Hassan, grocer.

K?rtasiye — Stationery. Registered with the Guild.

In the doorway, Mehmet stood with his arms folded and a look of great composure.

"A man who wishes to rise must pay at each stair," he said. "I have paid for the board. It is the smallest part."

"Thank you, Baba."

"Do not thank me. Go and eat." But his hand rested for a moment on his son’s shoulder, and it was not quite steady.

Across the lane, in the window of the barber’s shop, a face had appeared and quickly withdrawn.

Ayaan saw it, and he did not turn. He had learned something in the last month, and it was that a man who is watched need not be afraid of it, provided that every sign above his door is true.