Chapter 35: The Price of Being Seen

Chapter 35: Chapter 35: The Price of Being Seen

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 6 February 1910

Three men in dark coats entered the shop shortly before noon, and the oldest of them did not remove his hat.

He was Hac? Arif Efendi, the elder of the stationers’ guild of Emin?nü, and Ayaan had seen him twice in the street without ever being addressed. The two men behind him were the keepers of the great shops near the Sirkeci road.

"Hassan Efendi," said Hac? Arif. "We have come to speak about your prices."

"Please be seated, Efendi. Zeynep, will you bring tea?"

"We shall not stay for tea." The old man remained standing. "The price of a register in this shop has not changed since April, and it is lower than the price in my own."

"I buy in larger quantities, Efendi, and I rule the sheets by machine."

"So I have heard. I have also heard that a machine in Kas?mpa?a does the work of twenty boys, and that twelve of the boys who ruled for my guild have been dismissed by the shops that now buy from you."

Ayaan felt the weight of the sentence, and he did not look away from it.

Twelve boys. I had not once counted the boys.

He had counted the cost of iron and wood and a young engineer’s wages. He had not thought of the quarter’s hand-rulers as a column in any ledger, and he saw now that they were a column in someone else’s.

"I did not know that the number was so great," he said.

"You did not ask."

"No, Efendi, I did not, and I regret it." He took a breath. "May I make a proposal?"

The old man’s eyes narrowed, but he gave a short nod.

"I have a room at the warehouse with two long tables and a good light. If your guild will send me the twelve boys, I shall employ them there to feed and cut the ruled sheets, at the wage that they earned before."

"Feeding a machine is not a craft."

"It is not, and I shall teach them one." Ayaan spoke carefully. "In a year, those who wish may learn the care of the machine itself from the engineer who built it."

"And the shops that buy from you?"

"I shall sell to every member of the guild at the same price that I charge the shops of Sirkeci, so that no man’s trade is harmed by his neighbour’s."

The keepers of the Sirkeci shops looked at one another, and the younger one coughed.

"It is a generous offer," said Hac? Arif slowly. "It is more generous than I expected from a young man who has been called a thief of the quarter’s trade."

"Who has called me that?"

"Several people, at several coffeehouses." The old man almost smiled. "I told them that a thief does not come to the door with an offer of wages."

He took off his hat at last and held it against his chest.

"I shall bring the boys on Monday," he said. "And I wish you to know, Hassan Efendi, that you are being watched by a great many eyes in this lane."

"I have begun to understand it."

"Then you will also understand that some of them are friendly, and some are not." He put on his hat. "It is the price of success, and it is paid on the first day."

II

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 15 February 1910

?smail Usta reached the shop at noon with the soot of the furnace still upon his hands, and Halil R?fat walked a step behind him.

Neither of them wished to sit, and neither of them would explain himself until the door of the back room was closed.

"A man came to the yard this morning," said ?smail. "He is the foreman of the English shipyard at the head of the quay, and he gave me this."

He laid a card upon the table. It read Rowland Pike, and below it the name of a house in Glasgow, in small copper-plate letters.

"I know him by sight," said Ayaan. "He watched your men from the shed door in July."

"He watched, and he wrote in a notebook, and today he came in and sat upon my bench uninvited." ?smail’s voice was low and rough. "He spoke good Turkish, and he said that he admired my castings."

"Did he?"

"He said that a man of my skill was wasted in a small yard, and that his firm would pay me three times what I earn now, with a house at Hask?y and a pension." The foundry master drew a breath. "He offered it twice, so that I should know that he was serious."

Zeynep, who had come in quietly from the shop, laid a hand upon the back of a chair.

"What did you answer, Usta?"

"I thanked him, and I said that I had a contract and a bench that were my own." He looked at Ayaan. "He asked what the stationer paid me for. I said that I cast brass."

"And Halil Bey?" said Zeynep.

"He asked me about the assays," said Halil, and his jaw was tight. "He knew that we had been testing the pig iron. He did not know the figures, but he knew the word."

"Who told him?"

"I cannot say. The word may have come from a merchant who sells us the iron, or from a boy who carries our samples, or from a man in a coffeehouse." The engineer shrugged with some bitterness. "In a quarter of this size, a secret has a short life."

Ayaan looked at the card for a long moment, and he felt the room grow smaller.

I thought that no one was looking. A foreman wrote in a notebook, and I told myself that it was nothing.

He had been naive in a particular way, for he had read of great events and had never stood before one.

A book may describe a rival’s offer, and a living rival may place it upon one’s own table.

"You did not have to come to me," he said. "You might have thought it over for a week, and no one would have blamed you."

"Three times the wage is a great deal, Efendi."

"It is."

"It is not so great as the thing that you have given me." ?smail’s eyes were steady. "I was a man who cast bells and was ashamed of his cracks. You asked to see all the cracks, and you did not laugh."

Ayaan could not answer at once.

"I shall pay you what the scale says," he said at last, "and when the workshop grows, I shall pay you more. It will not be three times, but it will be honest."

"That is what I wanted to hear, Efendi, and I should have stayed for less."

"You must not stay for less. A man who stays for less will one day be offered a little more." Zeynep spoke quietly. "Loyalty that rests only upon a wage is bought by the next buyer, and loyalty that rests upon respect is not."

"Han?m is right," said Halil unexpectedly. "I have been offered a post at the Arsenal twice since September, and I refused it for the same reason."

"You did not tell me."

"You did not ask." The engineer’s mouth twitched. "I have begun to find that an employer who does not ask is a refreshing thing."

When the two men had gone, Ayaan sat for some time with Pike’s card between his fingers.

"We shall have to be more careful," he said.

"We shall have to be more than careful," said Zeynep. "We shall have to be wise."

III

Constantinople, üsküdar — 22 February 1910

Cevdet read the report twice, and then he laid it upon the desk and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

It had been a long winter in the pasha’s library. The stove was low, and the book that he had been annotating lay open beside the inkwell, abandoned since morning.

"The guild came to him on the sixth," said Fehmi, who stood before the desk with his hands folded. "He did not argue with them, Efendi. He offered to employ their boys."

"I have read that." Cevdet lifted the page. "I have also read that an Englishman named Pike called at the foundry in Kas?mpa?a on the fifteenth, and that he offered the foundry master three times his present wage."

"The foundry master refused."

"He refused, and he reported it to the stationer within the hour. That is the part that interests me."

"Why, Efendi?"

"Because most men, offered three times their wage by a foreigner, would think carefully for a week before they refused." Cevdet folded his hands. "This man refused at once, and went to his employer, and the only explanation is that the stationer has made it worth his while to do so."

Fehmi hesitated.

"Efendi, may I say what I fear?"

"Say it."

"The Englishman is not the only one. A clerk of the Ottoman Bank has mentioned the stationer’s name twice in a month at the coffeehouse by the Galata bridge, and a gentleman who describes himself as an agent for a German machine firm has asked where the shop is."

"Then he has been seen."

"He has been seen by a good many persons, Efendi, and not all of them are persons who wish him well."

Cevdet looked out through the window at the leafless trees of the pasha’s garden. He had spent the better part of ten months reading about a young man who made paper and iron and accounts, and he had formed no clear opinion of what the young man was.

A man cannot do what he is doing and remain unseen. The only choice is who will do the looking.

"Is the Finance Ministry still intending to send an inspector to the shop?"

"A routine inspection, Efendi, within the month."

"Then I wish to know who is chosen." He took up the pen. "It is a small matter, and I do not think that anyone will remark upon it. An honest inspector can do the stationer a great deal of good, and a dishonest one can do him a great deal of harm."

"And if the inspector is a dishonest man?"

"I shall see that another is sent." Cevdet wrote a name upon a slip of paper and passed it across. "That is all that I am permitted to do, Fehmi, and it is not nothing."

He sat for a while after the clerk had gone, with the pen in his hand.

He is being watched by many, and he does not yet know how many. When he learns it, he will either hide or he will become wise.

It occurred to him that he hoped, a little, for wisdom.

IV

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 March 1910

The inspector from the Ministry of Finance was a stout man of fifty named R?za Bey, with a pair of gold spectacles and a leather case that held his papers of authority.

He arrived at nine in the morning and asked to see the books.

Zeynep brought them down herself. She laid the green ledger upon the counter, and the working ledger beside it, and the thin venture ledger beside that, and she stood back with her hands folded over her coat.

"Three books," said R?za Bey, and his eyebrows rose. "Most shops of this size keep one."

"We keep three, Efendi, because we wish to know separately what the shop earns, what it spends upon daily business, and what it has risked upon new work." She said it in an even voice. "The household’s reserve is held elsewhere, in the name of two persons, and is not part of the shop’s books."

"I see." He opened the first ledger. "This is your own hand, Han?m?"

"It is."

The inspector read for an hour, without speaking, and Ayaan stood at the end of the counter with nothing to fear.

He found that this did not make the hour any shorter.

When the inspector reached the last page of the venture ledger, he laid down his pen and removed his spectacles.

"I have inspected shops in this city for twenty-two years," he said. "I have found false entries, and double entries, and entries made in the hands of dead men."

"We hope that you have found none here, Efendi."

"I have found one error of sixteen kuru? in the March column of the working ledger, which I think is a clerk’s slip." He glanced at Zeynep. "I have also found the best-kept books that I have seen in my career, and I intend to say so in my report."

"You are very kind."

"I am not kind, Han?m. I am accurate." R?za Bey replaced his spectacles. "I will add something that is not in my report, and I ask that you not repeat it."

"We shall not."

"Your shop has been named in the Ministry of Public Instruction as a supplier of registers and forms to the provincial schools. It was named by a clerk who has seen your ruled sheets, and who says that they are the first that were ever straight."

Ayaan felt his pulse quicken.

"I did not know that the Ministry knew of us."

"The Ministry knows of everything, Efendi, though it does not always know that it knows." The inspector gathered his papers. "I would advise you to be ready for an order that may be larger than you have ever filled."

He bowed to Zeynep and left, and the door closed behind him upon the sound of the street.

"He was not a man who expected to be pleased," said Zeynep, and she let out a breath that she had been holding for an hour.

"He was pleased, and he has told two ministries."

"Which is both what we wished and what we feared." She closed the ledger. "Ayaan, we are being seen from the Palace to the coffeehouse, and I do not think that it was your intention."

"It was not."

"Then we had better decide what to do about it."

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 March 1910

On the second Saturday of March, after the shop had closed, Ayaan sat down with Zeynep and Elias Benveniste at the back table, and he spoke before anyone could ask him why.

"I have been wrong about something," he said. "I thought that I could build quietly, and that a stationer who made fair prices would be left alone."

"No one is left alone who is doing anything worth the doing," said Elias.

"So I have learned in five weeks." Ayaan opened the notebook. "I should like to write down what we shall do about it, and I should like each of you to tell me where I am mistaken."

"You wish a charter for discretion," said Zeynep.

"I wish a charter for being seen."

He had written seven lines during three nights in which he could not sleep. Now he read them aloud, slowly, so that each could be weighed.

The first. Nothing shall be said that need not be said, and nothing shall be written that would harm us if read by a stranger.

The second. Each person in the House shall know his own work completely and the work of others only so far as his own requires.

The third. The House shall have more than one face, and no single person shall carry the whole of it in his name.

The fourth. Every letter shall be read twice before it is sent, and a copy shall be kept in two places.

The fifth. Authority shall be delegated in writing, with a limit, and shall be tested in small matters before it is given in large ones.

The sixth. Trust shall be given by degrees.

The seventh. No honest person shall ever be asked to lie for the House.

When he had finished, a silence followed, and then Elias cleared his throat.

"The seventh is the one that I should have asked for, Efendi, and did not."

"It is there because of you," said Ayaan.

Zeynep tapped the page with her fingernail.

"I wish to speak about the first, and the third." She looked up. "The first is wise, and the third is dangerous."

"How so?"

"Because a House with many faces may be thought to be a House with many lies." She spoke without heat. "If a man discovers that the foundry belongs to the stationer, and the stationer to the warehouse, and the warehouse to a name he has not heard, he will conclude that he is being deceived."

"He would be mistaken."

"He would be mistaken, and he would be angry, and he would have a right to be." She leaned forward. "I will accept discretion, Ayaan. I will not accept disguise. Every name in the House must be an honest name, and every man must be told, if he asks, whom he works for."

"That is fair."

"The foundry shall be ?smail Usta’s foundry, because it is his, and the shop shall be the shop. If they are partners, that shall be written in the contract of partnership, and not in a cloak of names."

"Then the third is amended." He crossed out a phrase and wrote another above it. "The House shall be known in parts, and no one part shall carry the whole."

"That is better." Zeynep sat back. "And the fifth is the one that you will find hardest."

"Why?"

"Because you have not yet given authority to a single person without standing over him." She said it without malice. "It is the fault of a quick mind."

She is right. I have been a bottleneck since the first day.

"Then let us begin," said Ayaan, "with a test."

VI

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 28 March 1910

The test came sooner than he had planned.

Ayaan had left for Izmit on the twenty-sixth, by the morning steamer, to inspect a kiln that Mustafa Efendi had recommended. Zeynep was resting by the midwife’s advice, and so the shop was left for three days in the care of Elias Benveniste, who held a written authority for orders up to fifteen liras.

On the twenty-seventh, a gentleman in a well-cut coat entered the shop at noon.

"I am told that the stationer has a ruling machine," he said, in correct and careful Turkish. "I should like to see it, and I should like to buy the drawings."

"The machine is in Kas?mpa?a, Efendi, and it is not for sale."

"I am prepared to pay thirty liras for the drawings alone."

"The drawings are the property of the engineer who made them, and of the House, and neither is present." Elias folded his hands. "I may take your name and your address, and the matter will be put before them."

"There is no need to trouble them. Thirty liras is a good deal of money for a sheet of paper."

"It is a good deal, Efendi. It is also not mine to accept."

The gentleman smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes.

"Forty."

"I am sorry, Efendi."

"Fifty, in gold, and a letter of introduction to a great London house that will buy your paper for ten years." He laid a card upon the counter. "I do not think that your master would wish you to refuse that."

"My master has given me a limit of fifteen liras," said Elias, "and a rule that I shall not do what I believe to be dishonest. I believe that the purchase of an engineer’s work without his knowledge is dishonest, Efendi, and I decline it."

The gentleman looked at him for a moment, and then he picked up the card.

"You are a very careful clerk."

"I am a very careful clerk, Efendi, and I hope that I am a useful one."

When Ayaan returned on the twenty-ninth and read the letter that Elias had written, he read it standing at the counter, and then he read it a second time sitting down.

"He gave his name as Mr. Rowland Pike’s cousin," said Elias, "and he left no address, which I thought was irregular."

"Pike’s cousin."

"I should add that the card he left was blank upon the back, and I have kept it." The clerk laid it upon the counter. "I did not know whether it would be useful."

Ayaan took the card and turned it over. It bore the name of a firm in Glasgow, in small copper-plate letters.

"You did exactly as you ought," he said. "I could not have done better."

"You gave me the authority, Efendi."

"I gave you fifteen liras and a rule." Ayaan met his gaze. "You gave me more than I paid for."

Zeynep, from her chair by the stair, said nothing, but she was smiling.

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 10 April 1910

Mustafa Efendi came on Sunday to hear the whole account, and he heard it in silence, with his hands folded over the head of his cane.

"You are being hunted," he said at the end. "I do not say it to alarm you, but because you are old enough to hear it plainly."

"I understand it, Baba Mustafa."

"Do you understand why?"

"Because I make things that others buy, and I have begun to make things that others cannot." Ayaan looked at the notebook upon the table. "A man who builds is a threat to those who have always sold."

"That is the first reason. The second is that a House that is seen can be flattered, and bribed, and bought, and a House that is not seen can only be guessed at." The old merchant lifted his chin. "You cannot hide the shop, my son. You may only choose what the eyes see when they look at it."

"I have chosen a plain shop, a plain foundry, and a plain warehouse."

"Plain, and honest, and each with a different name above the door." Mustafa nodded. "That is wiser than a cloak. A cloak draws a hand to lift it, and a plain coat draws none."

They walked together down to the street, and the evening was warm for April. Along the quay the lamps were being lit, one after another, and the water of the Golden Horn reflected each of them.

Over the door of the shop, the old sign read Hassan, Stationer, in black letters upon white. Ayaan stood beneath it for a moment, and he considered what it said.

It said very little, and that was the point.

Let them look at the sign. Let them see a stationer, and a good one.

At Kas?mpa?a the yard carried ?smail’s name, and the warehouse in the han carried the name of its landlord’s foundation. Each was true, and each told a visitor only what he needed to know.

"You are quiet," said Mustafa.

"I am thinking of what I must give away, in order to keep what I need."

"And what is that?"

"The belief that I am the only one who can do the work." Ayaan turned to him. "I thought that I should have to hide myself. I find that I must make myself less necessary."

"That is a good observation." Mustafa laid a hand briefly upon his shoulder. "A man who is indispensable is both a target and a bottleneck. You will find that a House which can lose its founder and continue is a House that no enemy can easily take."

"Allah willing, mine will be one of those."

"Allah willing, and with a good deal of patience." The old merchant tapped his cane upon the stones. "Go upstairs, my son. Your wife is waiting, and she is wiser than either of us."

Ayaan climbed the stair to the upper room, where the lamp was lit and the cradle of walnut stood beside the window. Zeynep looked up from the book on her lap and smiled.

"Well?" she said.

"I have been told that we are seen."

"I know that we are seen." She laid the book aside. "I should like to know what you intend to do about it."

"I intend to be seen as a stationer," said Ayaan. "And I intend to be a great deal less necessary than I am."