Chapter 25: The Sultan and the New Order

Chapter 25: Chapter 25: The Sultan and the New Order

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 August 1908

Tahir Sermet came into the shop on a Wednesday morning, in a plain gray suit, and the bell rang for him as it rang for every other customer.

Ayaan was measuring a roll of blotting paper. He looked up, and for a moment he could not speak.

"Captain," he said, when he found that he could.

"Not today. I am on leave, and I have borrowed this coat." Tahir took off his hat.

His face was thinner than Ayaan remembered, and there were lines beside his eyes. "I wished to see the shop before I saw anything else in this city."

They clasped hands across the counter, and then Tahir laid his other hand briefly on Ayaan’s shoulder.

"Monastir," said Ayaan. "You wrote that you did not fire, and did not stop it."

"I have thought of nothing else for five weeks." Tahir looked along the shelves of ink bottles. "I have decided that both were right. I could not have stopped it, and I could not have joined it."

"And what could you do?"

"Remember the escort lowering their rifles. That was the revolution, I think. It was not the shot, but the men who stood and did nothing."

"You wrote it as a figure."

"I could write it in no other way."

"Two years of figures," he said. "I never once wrote you a letter that did not ask for something."

"You asked for the arithmetic."

"I did, and you sent me a paper instead." The captain smiled ruefully. "I was angry for a month. Then the Third Army was paid three months of its arrears in February, and I found that I had stopped being angry."

"That payment was one of the three remedies."

"I know that it was. I have read them." Tahir lowered his voice, though the shop was empty. "A clerk at the Treasury copied the paper and passed it to a friend of mine, who passed it to me. There was no name on it, but I knew the hand of your columns."

Ayaan set down the paper knife.

He had asked that the memorandum be carried to a reader and to no one else. He saw now that a document written in plain language will be copied by anyone who finds it useful.

"It has passed through more hands than I intended," he said.

"It has passed through a great many. That is why I am here." Tahir folded his hat in his hands. "There are men in Salonica who wish to meet the author. They are not fools, and they are not a mob. They are the men who will govern the Empire for the next few years."

"I will not meet them in secret, Captain."

"They do not wish to meet in secret now. Nothing is secret now." The captain looked at him steadily. "But I ought to tell you how they speak, because I would not wish you to be surprised. In Salonica, there are three kinds of men. Those who helped, whom they call friends. Those who stood aside, whom they call the undecided. And those who opposed."

"And the fourth kind?"

"There is no fourth kind." Tahir said it without cruelty. "They remember lists, Ayaan. They kept them for years, in the dark, and they will not lose the habit because the sun has risen."

"Then I shall be among the undecided."

"I would rather that you were a friend."

"I signed the bakers’ contracts. The lane did not starve, and not one window was broken in Emin?nü." Ayaan met his eyes. "Tell them so. Tell them that I do not belong to anyone’s list, and that I will answer any question of figures that they ask, openly, in this shop, with the door unlocked."

The captain was silent for a long moment.

Then he laughed, shortly, as he had once laughed in a coffee house at Beyaz?t.

"I will tell them that the stationer is still waiting to be useful," he said.

II

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 29 August 1908

The bakers repaid the credit on the twenty-fourth, to the day, and Zeynep entered the sum in the book with a satisfaction that she did not trouble to conceal.

"Two hundred and sixty liras," she said. "Every one of them returned, and the lane is fed."

"It is a good result."

"It is more than good. The bakers have asked whether the same arrangement may be made at the next uncertain season." She turned the ledger toward him. "A gift would have earned us gratitude. A loan has earned us a custom."

She did not look up, and Ayaan understood that she was waiting for him to ask what else she had to show him.

"What else have you to tell me?"

"I have something to read." She drew a folded sheet from her sleeve. "It is a newspaper. There are a great many of them now, and this one is printed in Beyo?lu and sold in Emin?nü."

She cleared her throat.

"In the quarter of Emin?nü, eight houses of commerce held the price of bread through the days of uncertainty, under an agreement of which the contracts were drawn by a young clerk of the house of Hassan. Mustafa Efendi, who signed first, declines to take any credit for it."

Ayaan reached for the sheet.

"They have named the house, and they have named me." He read it twice. "I took care that my name was not on the paper."

"You were not on the paper. You were in the newspaper, which is a different thing." Zeynep’s mouth moved. "You cannot stand behind eight older men and expect that nobody will count the heads."

"It was meant to be a quiet arrangement."

"Then you ought to have kept the contracts in a drawer and let the lane be hungry." She took the sheet back and folded it. "A man who does something worth doing will be noticed, Ayaan. You may choose how to be noticed, but you cannot choose not to be."

He was silent, and she softened.

"I will put it in the book," she said. "Under Reputation, with a note of the date."

"Is there such a heading?"

"There is now."

That evening, Mehmet came home with the newspaper under one arm and a bundle of six more copies under the other.

"Baba, why six?" asked Ayaan.

"One for the wall of the grocery, one for your uncle in Fatih, and one for each of the neighbors who did not believe that my son kept a better ledger than theirs."

"I asked that my name not be printed."

"You asked. The newspaper did not agree." Mehmet set the bundle down with some ceremony. Fatma, at the stove, said that he would speak of nothing else until the spring.

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 9 September 1908

The visitor who came on the ninth of September was a tired man of fifty, with ink on his thumb and a coat that had been mended at the cuff.

"Naz?m Efendi, deputy director of the Court of Accounts," he said, and laid a card on the counter. "You will forgive me if I come directly to the point. I have not much time, and neither has the Court."

"How may I serve you, Efendi?"

"The Court has been instructed to prepare a statement of the year’s revenue and expenditure for the Chamber, when it meets." Naz?m set down a satchel. "It will be the first such statement in thirty years. I have forty clerks, and I have discovered that every office of the state keeps its figures in its own manner."

"Forty ways of writing a number."

"At the least." The deputy director looked at him with a flicker of dry humor. "I have been given a paper, Efendi. It was passed to me by a superior who did not say where he had it. It proposed that the Court should be given the authority to publish such a statement, and it proposed it without any insolence, which is rare."

Ayaan did not allow his expression to change.

"The Director believes that it was written by a retired official," said Naz?m. "I told him that it was far too clear."

"A stationer sees a great many forms, Efendi. Mostly bad ones."

"I did not ask who wrote it." The deputy director inclined his head. "I have come to ask whether a stationer who sees bad forms may be willing to design a good one."

It was not the request that Ayaan had expected, and it was better.

They worked at the back table for three hours. Naz?m brought samples from the Customs, the Salt Administration, and the Ministry of Finance, and Ayaan laid them side by side and found, as he had foreseen, that no two agreed on what a column meant.

He drew a single page. It carried four columns, headed Assigned, Collected, Spent, and Owed, and beneath each office’s total a line for the signature of the clerk who had written it.

Naz?m read the last column, and then the heading.

"Owed," he said. "It is carried to the following month."

"In the same place, every month. It cannot be omitted without leaving a gap."

"It will be unpopular in several departments."

"I believe that is an argument in its favor."

"My clerks will be distressed. They have kept their figures in private for thirty years, and they regard them as a personal possession."

"Then tell them that the column is not an accusation, Efendi. It is only a record of what remains to be done."

The deputy director laughed, and it was the first time that he had done so.

"Two thousand sets," he said. "Printed on the paper that is on your sample, to be delivered by the end of October."

"At the price on the printed list, Efendi. It is the same for the Court as for the grocer."

"I have heard that said of you." Naz?m rose, and he put his hat on. "I shall tell the Director that the Court has found a stationer. I shall not tell him that I suspect the stationer of being the author."

"You need not tell him anything, Efendi."

"No," said the deputy director. "I think that it is better, for the present, that I do not."

IV

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 20 October 1908

The boycott committee came to the shop at noon, six young men with a banner and a list.

Austria had annexed Bosnia, and Bulgaria had declared itself independent of the Sultan, and in the course of a fortnight the whole city had turned its anger toward the merchants who sold what had been made in Vienna.

The leader was a student of nineteen named Cemil, with a thin earnest face and a voice that cracked when he raised it.

"We are inspecting the shops of the district for Austrian goods, in the name of the nation," he said. "We ask that you open your storeroom."

"The key is on the counter," said Ayaan.

Behind the young men, at the edge of the lane, a small knot of onlookers had gathered. Among them stood Rafet Bey of Unkapan?, in a good coat, with the patient smile that Ayaan remembered.

Cemil took the key and went into the storeroom, and the others followed.

On the middle shelf, sixty cases of Viennese ink stood in a row. Each of them had been sealed with a strip of paper, and across the strips ran the shop’s own stamp and the date of the tenth of October.

A notice in Ayaan’s hand was pinned to the wall above the cases.

Austrian goods held in this shop are sealed, are not for sale, and will remain so until the committee of the quarter permits.

Cemil read it twice.

"You have sealed them," he said.

"On the tenth, Efendi. The day that the decree was announced."

"But you hold them."

"I bought them in the spring of two years ago, in gold, from a house that was a friend to this one. It is not a crime to have bought what was lawful when I bought it." Ayaan did not raise his voice. "I will not sell them, and I will not burn them. I will carry the loss until the boycott is lifted, and I ask only that the seal be left unbroken."

"Others have burned theirs."

"Others may. I have made mine harmless to everyone but myself."

The young men looked at one another. Cemil tore a corner from his list and wrote something on it, and then he looked up.

"The committee will return," he said.

"It will be welcome, and I ask that it come at the end of the month, when the seals may be inspected again." Ayaan held out the ledger of receipts. "You may examine this also. It records every case that arrived, and every case that remains."

Cemil took the ledger, and he looked at it in plain surprise.

From the lane, a voice said, loudly, "Austrian gold!"

It was a smooth voice, and it did not come from the committee. Rafet Bey had not moved his feet.

Ayaan stepped to the door.

"I paid in gold for that ink, Efendi, and I have not been repaid for it, and I will not be repaid until the boycott ends." He addressed the lane, quietly, and the words carried. "If there is gold in this affair, it is my own, and it is sealed in a storeroom for the sake of my country."

There was a pause, and then someone at the back said that the boy was right.

Rafet Bey adjusted his collar, and walked on.

Zeynep, who had watched from the shop doorway with her arms folded, waited until the lane had emptied.

"He will come again," she said.

"I know."

"Then we shall write down today’s date, and what was said, and who heard it." She went to fetch the pen. "A man who is patient with his enemies ought also to be careful of them."

V

Constantinople, the Sublime Porte — 28 October 1908

The two thousand sets of forms were delivered on the twenty-eighth, in six handcarts pushed by the porters of Emin?nü, and Ayaan walked behind them up the hill.

The offices of the Court of Accounts occupied a long corridor on the second floor. Naz?m Efendi met him at the stair with a clerk and a book of receipts.

"They are exactly as ordered," said the deputy director, when he had counted the first carton and weighed a sheet between his fingers. "I have not seen a state document delivered on its due date in nine years."

"The price is on the invoice, Efendi."

"I have read it. It is the price that was on the list."

A young man in a dark frock coat had stopped in the corridor and was looking into the open carton. He was perhaps thirty, clean-shaven, with the pale face of someone who reads at night.

"Is this the new form?" he asked.

"It is, ?ükrü Bey," said Naz?m. "The stationer who designed it is here."

The young man took a sheet and examined it, and his finger traveled down to the last column.

"Owed," he said. "Carried forward each month, in the same place." He raised his eyes. "Do you know that every ministry in this building has protested against that column?"

"I did not know, Efendi. I had hoped."

"You hoped for a protest?"

"I hoped that the column would be noticed. A column that is not noticed does not do its work."

?ükrü Bey considered him for a moment.

"I am secretary to the Minister of Finance," he said. "I came to see what the Court had ordered, because the Minister has been told that it is the only office in the Empire that has begun to count correctly." He handed the sheet to Naz?m. "Is it true that the Court intends to publish the total each year?"

"If the Chamber permits, Efendi."

"It will. The Chamber will want to see a figure." He looked again at Ayaan. "Another matter. A gentleman in the Palace secretariat asked this week whether the stationer who prints the Court’s forms is the same man whose name appeared in a newspaper in August. I said that I would inquire."

Ayaan kept his face still. "I am that stationer, Efendi."

"I thought that you might be." The young man inclined his head. "I shall tell him so. I suggest that you should not be surprised if he writes."

He went on down the corridor, and Naz?m let out a long breath.

"You have been noticed," said the deputy director. "I told you that it was better for the Director not to know. I see now that it is not my decision."

"No, Efendi," said Ayaan. "I think that it has not been for some time."

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 November 1908

Cevdet sat down.

In three years, he had never done so in the shop, and Ayaan brought him a stool from the storeroom without comment.

"I have written a report," said the scarred man. "I wish to tell you that I have changed a word in it."

"Which word, Efendi?"

"In the heading, I once wrote to be watched. This morning I wrote to be consulted." The dark eyes were grave. "I do not tell you this as a compliment. I tell it because I said that I would be plain."

Ayaan waited.

"I have observed several things, over three years. In the spring of 1906, you built a reserve before the lane was frightened. In the following July, you drafted the contracts for the bakers before the Third Army sent its telegram." He counted on his fingers, slowly. "Last month, you sealed the Austrian ink the day that the decree was announced, and not a day after."

"I was fortunate."

"A man is fortunate once, young Hassan. I have counted four times." Cevdet lowered his hand. "I do not accuse you of foreknowledge. I do not believe in men who know the future. I believe in men who read arithmetic more patiently than their neighbors."

"I hope that I am one of them."

"I have decided to believe that you are." The scar creased. "I still do not understand all that you are. But I understand what you are not. You are not an agent of any foreign power, and you are not a conspirator of the Committee, and you are not a man who takes the first offer that is made to him."

It was, Ayaan saw, a decision that had cost the man something.

"I thank you, Efendi."

"Do not. You have not yet been tested." Cevdet leaned forward. "There is a man called Rafet Bey who has friends in the local branch of the Committee. He is not important in himself, but he has noticed that you have been noticed."

"I have seen him at my door."

"He will try again, and he will not use the same method." "A reader asked me this week whether the young man who seals his own goods does it from fear or from honesty. I answered that I did not yet know which, but that the two are not incompatible." The scarred man rose. "Keep your seals unbroken, and keep your contracts registered. And let your accounts be such that anyone may examine them."

"They have always been so."

"I know." Cevdet paused at the door. "That is the whole of my report."

VII

Constantinople, the Road to the Chamber — 17 December 1908

The Parliament of the Empire opened on a cold bright Thursday, and the whole city came out to watch the Sultan pass.

Ayaan stood in the third rank of the crowd beside his father, with Zeynep and her parents a little to the left. Mustafa Efendi had worn his best coat, and Emine Han?m had a shawl drawn up over her hair against the wind.

The road was lined with soldiers, but they were not the same soldiers. Their uniforms were the same, and their rifles, but there were no police at the corners, and no one in the crowd looked over his shoulder.

"I have never seen so many different people on one road," said Mehmet quietly.

"In my father’s day, they would have cleared it of everyone but the faithful," said Mustafa Efendi. "I am not certain that I would have believed this, had I been told."

It was true.

Beside a Greek grocer stood an Armenian tailor, and beside the tailor a Bedouin in a long cloak who had traveled from Damascus to see the opening. A Jewish clerk and an Albanian porter shared a step, and a priest and a dervish stood back to back to keep out of the wind.

It is the new order. It is only a day, and it is already more than I expected.

A band began to play, and the horsemen came first.

The Sultan rode in an open carriage, in a plain uniform with a single decoration. He was a small, gray man, and he sat upright, and the crowd rose to its toes and called his name.

Padi?ah?m ?ok ya?a!

Ayaan did not call it. He watched the face.

The speech from the throne was read in the Chamber an hour afterward, and it reached the streets by criers before noon. The Constitution was the law of the Empire, they cried, and all its subjects, of every faith, were equal before it.

Equal before it. The words are easy to say.

They must be made to mean something in the courts, and in the tax office, and in the shops.

It was not tired as it had been two years before, on the road to the Hamidiye Mosque. It was the face of a man who had been told that the terms of his survival had changed, and who had resolved to study the new terms with care.

For a moment, as the carriage passed within ten paces, the dark eyes rested on the crowd.

They moved along the front rank, and they paused, briefly, on the young man in the third who was not shouting. Then they went on.

"Did he see you?" whispered Zeynep.

"I think that he saw everyone."

"He saw you particularly."

"He sees everything particularly," said Ayaan. "It is how he has lasted."

At the end of the road, among the officials who stood beside the gate of the Chamber, he saw a man in a dark coat with a scar along his cheek. Cevdet did not look toward him, and he did not need to.

Hovsep Agopian was weeping again, openly, a few paces away. Mustafa Efendi put a hand on his shoulder, and neither of them said anything.

VIII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 20 December 1908

On Sunday evening, after the shutters were closed, Zeynep sat on the crate in the storeroom with her hands folded.

"You have been carrying a question for five months," she said.

Ayaan stood in front of her with the lamp behind him.

"I have."

"My father told me that you came to his study in July and that you did not ask for me. You asked whether you might ask." She tilted her head. "I have waited a long time for the second part."

"I wished to wait for a day without a revolution."

"And you chose to ask in the storeroom, among the ink."

"Everything important has happened in the storeroom."

"That is true, and it is unfortunate," said Zeynep.

She laughed, and the sound carried through the empty storeroom to the shuttered shop beyond.

"There has not been one. There has been the annexation, and the boycott, and the Parliament. There will always be something." She smiled. "I did not marry myself to a man who would wait for a quiet year."

"You have not yet married yourself to anyone."

"That is precisely my point." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were bright. "Ask me properly, Ayaan Hassan. I have conditions, and I intend to state them."

He drew a breath.

He had rehearsed it for five months, in a hundred forms, and he found that none of them was the right one.

"Zeynep," he said. "I have a question."