Chapter 37: Zeynep’s Ledger

Chapter 37: Chapter 37: Zeynep’s Ledger

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 5 June 1910

Elias Benveniste brought the Galata invoices to the back table at seven in the morning, before the shop had opened.

He laid them out in order of date, eleven sheets in all, and he stood aside with his hands behind him.

Zeynep took the first sheet. She had come down the stair slowly, with one hand upon the rail, and the midwife’s warning that she should not sit long over figures was plainly in her mind and plainly set aside.

"These are the invoices that Sadullah Bey’s paper house sent to him in the last two years," she said. "Elias obtained them honestly, from the printer’s own clerk, with the printer’s leave."

"He gave his leave at once," said Elias. "He said that a man who has signed a memorandum should have no secrets from his partner."

"A generous sentiment, and a convenient one." Zeynep ran a finger down a column. "Ayaan, what price did you use for the register paper in your schedule?"

"The price on the printer’s invoice." Ayaan stood at her shoulder. "Three kuru? and one-tenth for the paper of each register, with the covers excluded."

"Then look at the foot of the third sheet."

He looked.

Beneath the sum there was a line in a smaller hand that he had read three times and had taken for a clerk’s flourish. It said that a rebate of twelve parts in the hundred would be credited to the buyer at the close of the year, upon purchases above a stated quantity.

"It is a volume rebate," he said slowly.

"It is a volume rebate that Sadullah Bey earns and that we do not." Zeynep turned the sheet toward him. "The price in your schedule is his net price, after the rebate has been returned to him in January."

"He told me what he paid."

"He told you what he paid in the end, and the invoice records what he pays at the start." She said it gently. "The House will receive the invoice price, because we have no volume to earn a rebate, and the invoice price is twelve parts in the hundred higher."

Ayaan did the sum in his head, as he did all sums, and he felt his face grow warm.

"That is four-tenths of a kuru? more upon every register," he said. "The profit that I wrote as one kuru? is six-tenths."

"It is six-tenths if the price of paper is the only difference." She took a second sheet. "There is also the term of payment. The Galata house requires settlement in thirty days, and the Ministry pays ninety days after delivery."

"I knew of the Ministry’s term."

"You knew of it, and you placed the gap in the working ledger, which holds four hundred liras that are free." Her voice did not rise. "The paper for the registers will cost something above eleven hundred liras, and it will be due long before the Ministry has paid us a kuru?."

Nobody spoke. Elias studied the ceiling with great attention.

I wrote that schedule in the certainty of having won. I did not read the foot of a single page.

"There is one more matter," said Zeynep, and she held up the last invoice. "The paper is priced in Austrian crowns, and the house bills in kuru? at the rate of the day on which the printer pays."

"Then the cost moves with the exchange."

"It moves, and your six kuru? does not."

II

Constantinople, Galata — 6 June 1910

The counting-house of Agop Kalfayan stood above a row of warehouses near the Galata bridge, and its windows looked down upon the water and the crowded ferries.

Ayaan went there with Zeynep, who had agreed to come only on the condition that she might ride in a closed carriage and sit for the whole of the visit.

The old sarraf received them in his inner room, among the iron chests and the brass scales, and he heard the account of the Vienna invoices without once interrupting.

"You have discovered this before the first delivery," he said at the end. "That is fortunate, and it is also uncommon."

"It was discovered by my wife, Efendi."

"I assumed that it was." Agop Kalfayan inclined his head toward Zeynep. "Han?m, you have read an invoice more carefully than most clerks of the Ottoman Bank."

"I read the foot of the page, Efendi, which is where the truth is usually kept."

"It is, and the house in question keeps a great deal of it there." The sarraf folded his hands. "I know the house. It is a good one, and it gives its best terms to the buyer who buys most, and its worst terms to the buyer who buys for the first time."

"What would our terms be?" asked Ayaan.

"For a new account of the size that you describe, the invoice price, payment in thirty days, and a deposit against the crowns." Agop Kalfayan said it without sympathy. "If the exchange moves against you by two parts in the hundred, which it has done twice in the last three years, you will have lost the whole of your profit upon the order."

"Is there a means of fixing the rate?"

"There is. I can contract to deliver the crowns at a fixed rate upon a fixed day, for a charge of one and a half parts in the hundred." The old man shrugged. "It is a premium paid for certainty, and it is cheaper than the loss."

Zeynep was silent, and Ayaan saw that she was writing in the small notebook that she kept in her sleeve.

"And the thirty days?" she said.

"I cannot change the house’s terms, Han?m. I can only lend you the difference, at eight parts in the hundred by the year, against the Ministry’s signed order." He tilted his head. "The Ministry is a safe debtor, though a slow one."

"Eight in the hundred is very nearly the whole of our margin."

"It is a high price for a first order, and I will not pretend otherwise." The sarraf looked at Ayaan. "You are a young man who has found that cleverness is cheaper than capital until the day that it is not. I should prefer that you learn it from me than from the Galata bankers."

"I am learning it, Efendi."

"Then I will tell you what a rich man’s mistake looks like." Agop Kalfayan leaned back. "It looks like a price that is true for someone else."

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 8 June 1910

They argued for the first time in nine months, and it was Ayaan who raised his voice.

He did not remember afterward which word had done it, though he remembered the lamp upon the table and the green ledger open between them.

"The matter is simple," he said. "The loss is four-tenths of a kuru? upon thirty-two thousand registers, which is a little above one hundred and twenty liras, and the venture ledger can bear it."

"It can bear it," said Zeynep. "I do not say that it cannot."

"Then let it bear it, and we shall not trouble the Ministry or the printer."

"You wish the House to pay the Ministry’s price from the House’s pocket, in order that no one may be asked to examine the figure." She was sitting very straight. "That is not a solution, Ayaan, it is a decision not to have the conversation."

"It is a decision not to lose the contract over one-tenth of a kuru?."

"It is four-tenths, and you made the mistake in the first place by deciding not to read the page."

The words fell between them, and neither of them moved.

Ayaan drew a long breath.

"That is true," he said, in a quieter voice. "I did not read it, and I shall not pretend that I did."

"I am not seeking to wound you."

"I know it. It is not the wound that I resent." He pushed the ledger a little toward her. "I resent that I wrote the schedule alone, and that I was so certain of it that I did not ask anyone to read it."

"You asked Elias."

"I asked Elias to copy it. That is not the same."

Zeynep’s expression changed, and she looked down at her hands.

"Then I will tell you my proposal," she said, "and you shall tell me where it is weak."

"I shall."

"We ask the Ministry for an advance of one third of the price upon signing, as other contractors do when the order is large." She laid a finger upon the page. "That removes the gap in payment, and it removes the need to borrow from Agop Kalfayan at eight parts in the hundred."

Ayaan studied the figure for a long moment.

"It is a clean solution," he said, "and I think that it is dangerous."

"Why?"

"Because the advance must be authorised by the accounts office, and the accounts office is Server Bey." He spoke slowly. "A man who holds the date upon which we are paid holds our whole position. He may delay the advance until the day before the paper falls due, and we shall have no remedy that does not involve accusing him."

Zeynep was silent.

"I do not say that he will," said Ayaan. "I say that we should be giving him the means, and that he has already shown what he does with means."

She looked at him for some time, and then she began to smile, though she did not seem to intend it.

"You are right," she said. "I had thought only of the sum, and not of the hand that would count it."

"And you were right about the page."

"Then we have each been right about the other’s error." Zeynep closed the notebook. "I think that is how it ought to be done, and I think that we ought to write it down."

"As a rule?"

"As a rule. Nothing above one hundred liras shall be undertaken by either of us until the other has read it, with the figures, and has had leave to say that it is wrong."

"And if we disagree?"

"Then the plan waits a day." She said it firmly. "A day costs less than a mistake."

"There remains Sadullah Bey," said Ayaan. "If the rebate is to be shared, someone must ask him, and he has not forgiven me for knowing his accounts."

"Then I shall ask him."

"You are to rest."

"I am to rest from lifting, and from stairs, and from standing." Her eyes were bright. "The midwife did not forbid me to be persuasive."

He opened his mouth to object and found, to his own surprise, that he had no objection that he could honestly defend.

Ayaan took the pen and wrote it at the end of the notebook beneath the seventh line of the charter, and he signed it, and she signed it after him.

IV

?zmit, Hamidiye Paper Mill — 14 June 1910

The mill stood upon the shore of the gulf, a long building of brick with a tall chimney, and the smell of boiled rags reached the landing before the steamer had tied up.

Ayaan had come with Halil R?fat and a case of samples, and with a letter from Mustafa Efendi that had opened the mill-master’s door.

The master was a grey-whiskered man named Nikolaos Efendi, who spoke with the economy of one who has explained the same thing many times to people who did not listen.

"You wish to know whether our paper will take a ruling machine," he said. "It will take it, but it will not take it kindly."

"Why is that, Efendi?"

"Because our sizing is poor, and the ink drinks into the sheet." He led them down a long gallery where reels of pale paper hung to dry. "The Vienna paper is sized with better stuff, and it costs more, and it is worth the cost for certificates and good registers."

"And for ordinary school registers?"

"For ordinary registers, a sheet that will take a line without blotting is enough." Nikolaos Efendi stopped before a table. "I will show you what we can do with a little more care."

Halil R?fat had already taken out a sheet and was weighing it in his hand with a frown.

"The surface is not uniform," he said, "but the thickness is better than I feared."

"The thickness, we can guarantee. The surface depends upon the weather, and the weather in this gulf is not under my control." The mill-master permitted himself a thin smile. "I will tell you honestly that for an order of this size we could deliver within three months, and the price would be two-thirds of the Vienna price, with no crowns and no Galata house."

Ayaan felt a quickening of interest that he did not trust.

"Does the mill carry a debt?" he asked.

"It does, Efendi, to the Treasury." Nikolaos Efendi did not flinch. "It has paid its workmen late twice in the last year. I tell you so because a man who orders from us should know it."

He has given me a reason not to order from him, and the reason is exactly the one that I should have had to discover.

"I should like to test the sheets on the machine," said Halil. "Tomorrow, at Kas?mpa?a, with three weights of paper and a pen of each width."

"You shall have them." The mill-master turned to Ayaan. "You will find, Efendi, that a mill that is honest about its faults has a great many customers who do not return."

"I will return," said Ayaan.

"Then bring a larger order when you do, and I will bring a better sheet."

On the steamer home, Halil R?fat sat with the samples upon his knee and made notes in pencil without speaking, until the lights of Haydarpa?a were visible across the water.

"It will serve for six registers in ten," he said at last. "For the rest, we must have the Vienna paper, and we must have it upon terms we can bear."

"Zeynep will find the terms."

"She has found a good deal already." The engineer looked up. "It is an unusual household, Efendi, in which the wife corrects the husband’s figures and the husband writes it in a book."

"It is the only way that I can be sure of being corrected," said Ayaan.

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 22 June 1910

Sadullah Bey arrived at the shop in a closed carriage, with his clerk behind him bearing a leather case, and he asked for the Han?m before he asked for the master.

Zeynep received him at the back table, in the chair with the cushion that Elias had brought down for her, and she did not rise.

"Efendi, I thank you for coming," she said. "I have a proposal, and I should like you to hear all of it before you say whether it displeases you."

"I have been told that you read a page more carefully than my clerk." The printer lowered himself heavily into a chair. "Say it."

"The Galata house gives you a rebate of twelve parts in the hundred because your purchases exceed a certain quantity. We have discovered that we shall not earn that rebate, because our purchases alone are too small."

"I did not hide it."

"You did not, and we did not ask, and that is our fault." She laid a sheet before him. "I propose that the House buy its Vienna paper through your account, as a single order combined with your own, so that the Galata house sees one large buyer and not two small ones."

Sadullah Bey frowned, and his hand went to his chain.

"The combined quantity will carry the rebate to fifteen parts in the hundred, if the house keeps its table." Zeynep spoke without hurry. "Twelve parts will return to each of us as before. The additional three parts we shall divide equally, and the House will pay you a handling charge of one part in the hundred upon its share."

"Why should I carry your account?"

"Because your credit with the Galata house is good and ours is untried, and because they will extend ninety days upon an order of this size from a customer of eleven years." She said it as a plain fact. "You will earn the handling charge, and half of the added rebate, and you will risk nothing, because the House will deposit the full price with Agop Kalfayan before the order is placed."

"You will deposit it with the sarraf."

"In his hands, in a sealed account, in both our names." Zeynep slid a second sheet across the table. "Your clerk may read the form. It is the form that he uses for the great merchants."

The printer’s clerk bent over it, read silently for a minute, and gave a small nod to his master.

Sadullah Bey sat back and looked at Zeynep for a long time.

"My wife has told me," he said, "that there are two kinds of men who are dangerous in business. The first is the man who is clever, and the second is the man who is clever and has taken the trouble to be kind."

"I am not kind, Efendi. I am arithmetical."

"I should have said that it came to the same thing." He drew the sheet toward him. "I will do it, Han?m, upon one condition."

"Name it."

"That when the Ministry’s schedule is measured in March, you and I shall be named together as the suppliers who gave it its figures." He lifted his chin. "I have been thanked in the wrong places for eleven years, and I should like to be thanked in the right one."

"It shall be written so."

"Then we are agreed." The big man rose with an effort, and for a moment he stood looking down at her. "I will say to your husband what I have not said to him. He chose well in marrying you, and I think that he knows it."

"I think that he does, Efendi," said Zeynep. "I also think that he has been told so rather often this week."

Ayaan, who had been standing at the foot of the stair and had not spoken during the whole of the meeting, found that he was smiling and made no effort to stop.

VI

Constantinople, üsküdar — 27 June 1910

Cevdet read Fehmi’s summary in the pasha’s library, with the window open upon the garden and the smell of cut grass drifting in from the lawn.

It was a short report, and it contained a surprising number of items that he had not expected to see in it.

"The stationer’s wife," he said, when he had finished. "She is the one who found the error in the paper account."

"So the clerk Benveniste has told a person of ours, Efendi. She read the foot of a printer’s invoice and discovered that the rebate had not been counted."

"And the stationer himself?"

"He did not resent it." Fehmi seemed to find this the strangest part of his own report. "He wrote a rule in his notebook that neither of them shall begin a plan above a certain sum without the other’s reading, and they have both signed it."

Cevdet put down the page.

He had known many men in thirty years of service who were brilliant, and he had known a few who were honest. He could count upon one hand those who were brilliant, honest, and willing to be corrected by a woman who had not yet been twenty-one years in the world.

A man with a weakness that is known to him has a weakness half cured. A man with a partner who knows his weakness has it cured entire.

"Has the stationer’s house been approached by any other party this month?" he asked.

"A representative of a German firm called at the foundry, Efendi, and was received by the foundry master himself. He left without having been told anything."

"And the Englishman?"

"Nothing since April."

"Then the stationer’s discretion has begun to have an effect." Cevdet allowed himself to feel satisfied. "It is an effect that he could not have produced alone, and I think that he knows it."

"Shall I continue the watch, Efendi?"

"Continue it." He took up the pen. "And, Fehmi, when you write the next report, add a line concerning the wife. I do not mean her character, which is already known to us, but her opinions."

"Her opinions, Efendi?"

"She has begun to have opinions about finance that the stationer is obliged to take seriously." Cevdet looked out into the garden. "A man who is obliged to take a woman’s judgment seriously is a man who has chosen the right partner, and I should like to know what she thinks of the Ministry."

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 2 July 1910

The revised schedule was laid before the Ministry’s accounts office on a Saturday morning, in two copies, signed by Ayaan and Zeynep and countersigned by Sadullah Bey.

It stated that six registers in ten would be ruled upon paper from the mill at ?zmit, and the remaining four upon Vienna stock bought through the printer’s account. It stated the cost of each, and the cost of the exchange, and the charge of the sarraf, and it stated that the price of six kuru? would hold.

Elias had read it twice, and Halil R?fat had read it once, after testing three weights of the ?zmit paper upon the machine at Kas?mpa?a and finding that the middle weight took a clean line.

Ayaan had read it as many times as he could bear.

Zeynep had read it last, and she had found a single error of two kuru? in the addition, which Ayaan corrected with a small, silent satisfaction.

"It is a better plan than the first," she said. "It is also a more modest one, and I think that it will be profitable."

"Profit of nine-tenths of a kuru?, if the exchange holds."

"Nine-tenths, and a reserve for the exchange, and a payment that the House can bear." She rested her hand upon the curve of her side. "I think that Allah has been generous in sending us the error before the delivery."

"I think that Allah has been generous in sending me a partner who reads the foot of the page."

"Then He has been generous twice." Her mouth twitched. "I shall tell you a secret, Ayaan. I did not know that the rebate existed until I read it."

"You found it, however."

"I found it because I did not trust the number." She looked at the schedule. "That is the whole of my method. When a figure is very pleasing, I look for the reason."

Halil’s report upon the paper lay beside the schedule, and it was honest about the mill’s faults, as the mill-master had been.

A knock came at the door of the back room, and Elias entered with a sealed note and a face that was carefully empty.

"A messenger from the Ministry, Efendi. He says that it is from Re?id Bey, and that it is private."

Ayaan broke the seal.

The note was brief, written in the Under-Secretary’s small, upright hand, and it contained only three lines.

The Minister has read the report upon the trial of the registers. He has asked who prepared the schedule of prices, and I have told him that it was prepared by a stationer of Emin?nü who is not yet twenty-one.

He wishes to see you, and I advise you to say as little as is consistent with honesty.

Ayaan read it aloud, slowly, and then he gave it to Zeynep.

She read it twice, and she folded it with great care.

"Then we have been seen again," she said.

"We have been seen by the Minister himself."

"Then you had better begin tonight, my husband, to decide what you will say, and I shall read it before you say it."

"And if you find a fault in it?"

"Then the plan waits a day," said Zeynep, "and the Minister, I think, can wait with it."

Ayaan laughed, and he took the pen, and he began to write the first line.