Chapter 21: The Gathering Storm

Chapter 21: Chapter 21: The Gathering Storm

I

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 21 July 1905

The date had been written in the blue book for ten years.

Ayaan had set it down in the crooked letters of a five-year-old, and he had never needed to read it again.

21 July 1905. A Friday. Y?ld?z, after the noon prayer. A bomb in a carriage. The Sultan unhurt.

He opened the shop at the usual hour, and he did not open the book.

His father had gone to the Spice Bazaar for the week’s tea, and Zeynep was at her father’s warehouse counting lampwicks. The lane outside was loud with the ordinary noise of a Friday morning.

What can a grocer’s son do?

A warning had to be carried to someone, and the only man who might carry it was Cevdet Efendi, who would ask at once how a boy in Emin?nü knew the day. Ayaan did not know the name of the man who would bring the carriage, or the street by which it would come, or the minute at which it would explode.

He knew only that Y?ld?z would be crowded, and that more than twenty people would die, and that the Sultan would be spared. A vague warning would send guards into the crowd without a target, and he could not say whether a crowd searched in haste would lose fewer lives or more.

That is the reasoning of a man who wishes to be excused.

It is also correct. I cannot tell which of the two facts weighs more.

At a quarter to two, a porter named ?smail ran down the lane without his load, and he did not stop to be asked.

"There has been an explosion at Y?ld?z!" he shouted, to the doorways and to no one in particular. "At the mosque, after the prayer! They say the carriages were torn apart and the dead are lying in the road!"

Shopkeepers came out into the lane. One said that the Sultan was dead, and another said that he had not been touched, and the two reports passed up and down the cobbles for an hour.

Ayaan stood in his doorway with his hands at his sides.

I know which of them is true. I am the only man in this lane who does.

By evening the truth was known in every coffee house.

The Sultan had been delayed at the mosque in conversation with the ?eyhülislam, and he had left later than was his habit. The bomb had exploded as the crowd gathered at the gate, and he was unharmed.

More than twenty were dead, among them soldiers, grooms, and onlookers who had come only to watch the Sultan pass.

At supper, his father spoke the words that the whole city was speaking that night.

"Allah be thanked that he was spared," said Mehmet, "and Allah have mercy on those who were not."

Fatma looked at Ayaan across the table. He had eaten nothing, and she did not ask him why.

Later, by the lamp in his room, he opened the blue book at last.

Under the line that he had written at five, he added a second.

Dead: more than twenty. I did not warn them.

He looked at it for a long time, and then he wrote a third.

I will not again know a date and have no one who will listen. Influence must be built before the day that requires it.

II

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 25 July 1905

Four days after the explosion, the city had begun to regard itself with suspicion.

Ayaan learned of it from Zeynep, who ran the length of the lane to tell him.

"There are two men in Hovsep Efendi’s warehouse," she said, out of breath. "They are from the Ministry of Police, and they have demanded every letter that he has received from abroad."

"Has he anything to conceal?"

"Nothing. But he is an Armenian with correspondents in Trieste and Birmingham, and they have already used the word conspiracy twice." She pushed a strand of hair back with an inky hand. "He sent a boy for my father, and my father is at the customs house until evening."

Ayaan locked the till, left a note for Mehmet, and took from the shelf the copy-book in which he recorded every invoice that passed through the shop.

"Then we will be the witnesses that he lacks," he said.

The warehouse door stood open. Inside, a heavy man with a notebook was turning over a stack of letters, and beside him stood a thin man in a gray coat whom Ayaan had last seen at the tram stop in July.

Hovsep Agopian stood between them with his hands folded. His face was pale, and his voice was entirely steady.

"Letters in foreign hands," said the heavy man. "Why does an importer of pen nibs write to Trieste?"

"Because Birmingham ships through Trieste, Efendi," said Zeynep, before Hovsep could answer. "The steamers of the Austrian Lloyd carry the cases to Smyrna, and from Smyrna they come here."

The heavy man turned. "And who are you?"

"The daughter of Mustafa Efendi, who is Hovsep Efendi’s neighbor and has traded beside him for ten years."

Ayaan stepped forward and opened the copy-book on the table, beside the letters.

"Every letter has a shipping number, Efendi, and every number has an entry in the register of the Imperial Customs and a receipt for the duty paid." He turned the pages so that the columns faced the thin man. "If the Ministry wishes, I will carry these to the customs house myself, and a clerk there may compare them in your presence."

"You are a boy," said the heavy man.

"I am a boy who keeps his accounts, Efendi. An honest ledger is glad of a witness."

The thin man in the gray coat had said nothing. He took the top letter and read the number, and he found it in Ayaan’s book, and he read the next.

He read for a quarter of an hour, and then he closed the copy-book and handed it back.

"Copy what you need," he said to the heavy man, "and we will go."

They left with a bundle of copied pages and without a word of apology.

Hovsep sat down slowly on a crate.

"Thirty years I have lived in this city," he said. "My father lived here before me, and he is buried in Kumkap?. Today a man asked me whether I loved the Sultan."

"What did you answer?" asked Zeynep.

"That I paid my duty on the day that it was due." The corner of his mouth moved and was still again. "I do not think that he found it satisfactory."

Cevdet came to the shop at closing, and he did not buy paper.

"I am not a customer today," he said. He stood just inside the door with his hat in his hand. "I wished to tell you that the report on Hovsep Agopian will state that his books were examined, that they were checked against the customs register, and that they were found to be in order."

"I did not ask you for anything, Efendi."

"No. I am aware of it." The scar did not move. "I tell you so that you need not wonder, as I told you on the fifth of July. The man in the gray coat does not serve me. He serves the Ministry, and the Ministry sees names more readily than reasons."

"There is another matter. I had a man in the lane on Friday, and I will not pretend otherwise. He reports that when the news came, the lane cried out, and you did not."

Ayaan kept his face still.

"I was silent from fear, Efendi. Many men are."

"Many are," said Cevdet. "I make no accusation. I record what is not done, because it is often more informative than what is."

He put on his hat and opened the door.

"You stood beside a man under suspicion today, with a ledger in your hand. It was brave, and it was a risk."

"I would do it again."

"I know that you would," said the scarred man. "That is what interests me."

III

Constantinople, Beyaz?t — 12 August 1905

The Ministry of War stood at the top of Beyaz?t, a long gray building with a tower, and some of its clerks bought their ink from Hassan Stationery.

On a hot Saturday morning, Ayaan climbed the hill with a parcel under his arm and a sample of the new pay register that he and Zeynep had designed in June.

In the quartermaster’s office, an officer was shouting at a clerk.

He was not shouting loudly, but his voice carried a restraint that was plainly costing him effort.

"The second battalion is owed eight months," said the officer. "Your register shows six. Where are the other two?"

"The sums were carried forward, Lieutenant, in the ordinary way," said R?fat.

"Carried forward to where?"

R?fat had no answer. The officer turned away in disgust and saw Ayaan in the doorway with his parcel.

He was perhaps twenty-six, lean, with a clipped mustache and the dust of a long ride on his boots. The badge on his collar was that of the General Staff.

"Is this the stationer? What do you sell, boy, besides ink?"

"Registers, Lieutenant. May I show you one?"

Ayaan laid it open on the desk. Down the left side ran the names of the men, and across the top ran the months, and at the right of every page there was a single narrow column headed Owed.

The lieutenant read the first page, and then the next, and then he stopped.

"The amount owed is carried to the top of the following month," he said. "In red."

"In the same place, every month, Lieutenant. It cannot be omitted without leaving a visible gap, and it cannot be reduced without a signature."

"Concealment," said the officer slowly, "is the chief art of this ministry."

"Then it is not a popular register," said Ayaan. "That is why I thought that an honest man might want one."

For a moment the lieutenant studied him in silence.

"My name is Tahir Sermet. Come. There is a coffee house across the square, and I wish to hear how a stationer’s boy came to design this."

Over two coffees, Tahir said without preamble, "Why is the army unpaid?"

Ayaan hesitated. He knew that the answer was of the kind that could cost a man his position, and he knew that the man across from him had asked for it.

"Because the revenues that are certain have been pledged to the creditors," he said. "The Debt Administration takes the salt, the stamps, the tobacco, and the silk tithe before the Treasury sees any of it. What remains is spent in Constantinople before it reaches the provinces."

"Go on."

"A soldier unpaid for eight months does not require anyone to persuade him that something is wrong. He reaches the conclusion himself, and it is not favorable to the officials who failed to pay him."

"You speak with the knowledge of an old banker," he said at last.

"I speak from reading ledgers, Lieutenant. Everything is in the ledgers, if one is willing to read down the column to the end."

The lieutenant laughed once, shortly, and the laugh altered his whole face.

"I will take a hundred of your registers for my regiment’s paymaster, at a fair price."

"The price is printed on the sample, Lieutenant. It is the same for the Ministry as for the grocer."

"Good," said Tahir Sermet. "Do not say these things in other coffee houses."

"I have said them in this one only because you asked."

"Then keep that habit, and come to see me again." He drank the last of his coffee. "I should like to know what else the ledgers say."

IV

Constantinople, Rüstem Pa?a — 28 November 1905

By the end of November, there were warships off Midilli.

The fleets of several Great Powers had anchored before the island, and their landing parties had taken the customs house, and they would not leave until the Sultan agreed to place the finances of Macedonia under foreign supervision. The news had reached the lane on Monday, and by Tuesday evening no one in it spoke of anything else.

Mustafa Efendi invited five importers to his house that night, and, to the surprise of Ayaan’s father, he asked that Mehmet bring his son.

The room was warm and crowded. Hovsep Agopian sat beside the stove, and across from him sat Stavros Kalfas, a Greek cloth merchant from Galata, and beside the window a heavy-shouldered dealer in Anatolian carpets named Salih Efendi was speaking in a voice that filled the room.

"They have taken a customs house," said Salih. "Tomorrow they will take ours. I say that we close our shops for one day, every merchant in Emin?nü, and send a petition to the Palace to say that the Empire is not for sale."

"A petition signed by merchants will be read by the Ministry of Police before it is read by anyone else," said Hovsep mildly.

"Then let them read it!"

"I have a cargo of cloth due at Salonica in three weeks," said Stavros Kalfas, who had not raised his voice at all. "This morning my insurers wrote to say that their rates will rise by a half. I should like to know whether the petition will pay the difference."

Several men laughed, and Salih’s face darkened.

"Ayaan," he said. "You keep a book of figures. What do the figures say?"

Salih Efendi stared at the boy in open disbelief.

Ayaan rose, because it seemed correct to do so, and he spoke slowly.

"They say that when fleets and creditors dispute a customs house, merchants pay in two ways, Efendi. They pay in insurance, and they pay in credit. The insurers raise their rates, as Stavros Efendi has said, and the banks shorten their terms, so that money lent for ninety days is called back in sixty."

"And what is the merchant to do about it?" demanded Salih.

"He can collect his debts early, and extend no new credit beyond sixty days. He can hold in gold a month of his expenses, and more if he is able." Ayaan kept his eyes on Mustafa. "On the day that the banks tighten, the merchant with cash in hand buys from the merchant who has none, at a lower price. That is not a political act, Efendi. It is only arithmetic."

"The boy tells us to hoard while the Empire is insulted!"

"I tell you to be solvent, Efendi." He said it without heat. "A merchant who cannot meet his bills can protest nothing. A merchant who can may be of use to the Empire on the day that it requires one."

There was a silence in the room.

Hovsep Agopian was the first to speak, and he was smiling a little.

"I believe that he has told you to pay your debts, Salih Efendi, and I cannot find a flaw in it."

"He is right," said Mustafa. "A man who cannot pay his creditors will not be permitted to be indignant at his rulers." He looked at Ayaan, and his expression was not wholly approval and not wholly alarm. "Sit down, my boy."

Walking home through the cold lanes with his father, he waited for the reproof.

"You spoke before your elders," said Mehmet.

"Yes, Baba."

"And you were correct."

"Yes, Baba."

"I do not know which of those two facts troubles me more." His father walked on a few paces in silence. "Your mother says that I am to trust you. I am trying."

"Thank you, Baba."

"Do not thank me. Do not become a man who is correct in every room, Ayaan. They do not forgive it."

V

Constantinople, Beyaz?t — 14 December 1905

The ships had left Midilli nine days earlier, after the Sultan accepted foreign supervision of the finances of the Macedonian provinces, and the lane had resumed its business in a subdued mood.

Tahir Sermet paid for the hundred registers in gold, and he counted the coins twice himself.

"Come to the back," he said, when it was done.

He led Ayaan through the book market behind the mosque to a bookseller’s shop, where a curtain hung across the rear wall. Behind it was a small room with a table, four chairs, and a lamp.

"There is a gathering on Sunday evenings," said Tahir, drawing the curtain closed. "A few officers. A physician. Two teachers from the Civil Service school. We read what is not sold in the front of this shop, and we speak of what the Empire might become if it were governed by law and not by fear." He did not lower his voice. "I think that you should come."

In July 1908, these men, or men very like them, will do what he describes. I know how it ends, and I know what it costs.

"Why do you want me?" Ayaan said aloud.

"Because we have many who are angry and very few who can count. A constitution is a fine thing, but it must be paid for, and the first man who asks where the money comes from will be called a traitor." Tahir leaned forward. "You have read the accounts of this Empire to the end of the column. We need someone who has."

"I will not come, Lieutenant," he said.

"I have three reasons, and I will give them honestly." Ayaan folded his hands on the table. "A gathering that must meet behind a curtain keeps a list of its members, and a list is a document. On the day that one member is questioned for a day and a night, the list is no longer private."

"You are sincere, Lieutenant, which is a different quality, and a more dangerous one." He said it without any wish to give offense. "The second reason is that many families depend upon my shop and my suppliers, and I have an Armenian friend whose warehouse was searched in July. My name is the only security that any of them has."

"And the third?"

"The third is that I do not believe the Empire’s trouble will be solved by those who are angriest. It will be solved by those who are able to govern on the morning after." He paused. "A revolt without accounts leaves an empty treasury on the second day, and the people it was meant to help are the first to go hungry."

Tahir was silent for a long moment.

"I think that the Empire needs reform, and that it needs it soon," said Ayaan. "But I think that I should work openly, with my name underneath, in the one field where I am useful. If your friends ever need a pay register that tells the truth, or a fund for the families of dead soldiers, or an account of what the Debt Administration truly takes, send word. I will put my name to any of those."

The lieutenant studied him.

"I will tell them that the stationer refused."

"Tell them that the stationer is waiting to be useful."

Tahir almost smiled. He drew back the curtain, and the noise of the bookshop returned.

"You should know one thing before you go. The officers in Salonica and Monastir are not as patient as we are in Constantinople. They have not been paid for a year, and they have begun to say so to one another."

"I understand."

"I believe that you do," said Tahir Sermet. "That is what I find strange."

VI

Constantinople, the üsküdar ferry — 6 January 1906

On the first Saturday of the new year, Ayaan crossed the Bosphorus to deliver an order of ledgers to a merchant in üsküdar, and he found the scarred man standing at the rail.

"Good morning, young Hassan," said Cevdet. "I did not follow you. I wish that to be understood."

"I believe you, Efendi. You are a library keeper, and a ferry is a public place."

"Quite so. Three weeks ago, you declined an invitation in Beyaz?t."

Ayaan did not answer at once.

"You need not ask how I know," said Cevdet. "Lieutenant Sermet is known to me, and he is a sincere man. Your remark on that subject has already been repeated in two coffee houses, and I heard it from a man who did not know that I was listening."

My sentences are traveling without me.

"I wished to ask why you refused," said Cevdet.

"You have heard my reasons, then."

"I have heard that you gave three. I wish to know whether they were the true ones."

Ayaan looked at the water.

"They were true. They were not the whole of it."

"What is the rest?"

"That I would rather be the man who is asked to govern on the morning after than the man who is asked to explain the night before."

Cevdet turned from the rail for the first time.

"That is an ambitious sentence for a stationer."

"It is only a ledger principle, Efendi. One counts the cost of an act before the act."

"I will tell you what I think, and you may decide what it is worth. I do not believe that a state that has endured this pressure for thirty years will endure thirty more without change. I have written as much in a report. I was thanked for my diligence, and I received no answer."

"What do you intend to do?" asked Ayaan.

"What I have always done. I watch, and I report, and I wait to be asked." He said it without bitterness. "It is a poor program, and I know it. But a man who acts without being asked has already become a faction, and I would not wish to be one."

"Your sentence about the unpaid soldier has also traveled," said Cevdet. "It is accurate and well phrased, and that is the danger. In this city, a sentence of that quality does not stay in the room."

"Then I will say less."

"You will say it in writing, to the right reader, or you will not say it at all." The scarred man turned his hat in his hands. "A great storm is gathering, young Hassan, and most of this city watches only the harbor."

"And you?"

"I watch the years behind the harbor, and they are not encouraging." The ferry’s horn sounded as üsküdar rose out of the haze. "When it comes, which side will you be standing on?"

"The side that still has a treasury."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only one that I am able to give."

"I will accept it for the present." Cevdet put on his hat as the ferry touched the pier. "Do not mistake the present for a long time."

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 6 January 1906

That evening, after the shutters were closed, Ayaan told Zeynep about the lieutenant, the curtain, the refusal, and the ferry, and she sat on the crate in the storeroom without interrupting.

He kept back only one thing, and he said plainly that he was doing so.

"I always know when you are keeping something back," she said. "You touch the edge of the blue book."

"Was I wrong to refuse?"

"No. But I do not think that it was only the lists."

"What was it, then?"

"You wish to be the man who is sent for afterward." She said it plainly. "You do not wish to be in the room when it is decided, because then you would be one of the men who must be forgiven. You wish to stand outside it with the accounts, and to be needed."

Ayaan was quiet.

"That is not a criticism," she said. "I think that it is a good strategy. But you should know that you are following it, because Lieutenant Sermet will see it, and Cevdet Efendi already has."

She took a ledger from the shelf beside her and opened it on her knee. "If trouble is coming, we shall need reserves, and I do not yet know enough about insurance tables or the rates at which banks recall their loans. Teach me, beginning tonight."

He laughed, and he sat beside her on the floor of the storeroom, and for two hours he taught her what he knew.

When she had gone home, he opened the blue book and wrote a number at the head of a clean page.

He counted it twice, though he had no need to, because he wished to see it written.

From 6 January 1906 to the first days of July 1908: thirty months.

Below it, in smaller letters, he set down what he had in hand.

A shop. A partner. A name that is trusted in the lane. A lieutenant who buys registers. A scarred man who watches.

He closed the book, and he put out the lamp.