Chapter 41: Post-Revolution Commerce

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Post-Revolution Commerce

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 4 January 1911

The Palace order was packed in the long room above the warehouse, two thousand reams in four hundred bundles, each tied with the blue cord of the House.

Zeynep stood at the end of the table with a slate in her hand and counted aloud as the porters carried the bundles down to the cart.

"Three hundred and ninety-eight," she said. "Three hundred and ninety-nine."

"Han?m, it is the same count that you made an hour ago," said Elias, who had followed her about the room with the delivery book.

"It was, and I shall make it again at the gate of the Palace." She did not look up from the slate. "A shortage of one bundle in a Palace order would be remembered for ten years."

Ayaan came up from the shop with a sample sheet in his hand, and he stopped in the doorway and said nothing. In the course of the year he had learned that it was wiser to let her finish.

When the last bundle was loaded, she turned to him.

"Each of the four hundred has been weighed against the sample, and the weights are written in the book. Elias has made three copies of the receipt, one for the Secretariat, one for the House, and one that I shall keep in the cedar box."

"Why a third?"

"Because Tahsin Bey will not be pleased, and a man who is displeased will look for a fault." She closed the book. "If he finds one, I wish to hold the proof that there is none."

"You have thought of everything."

"I have thought of what can be thought of." The corner of her mouth moved. "The rest belongs to Allah and the carter."

The cart rolled out into the street, with Elias walking beside the horse and the delivery book held against his chest.

A man in a good grey overcoat stood on the far side of the road, watching it go, with his hands clasped behind his back.

"That is Vlastos of Pera," said Zeynep quietly. "He has supplied the Chief Secretariat since before the revolution."

"He has come to see what he has lost."

"He has come to see what we have gained, which is a different matter." She watched until the grey coat turned and walked away. "He will not complain of the price, because the price is public, and so he will find another objection."

"What objection?"

"I do not know yet," said Zeynep. "That is what troubles me."

II

Constantinople, Bab-? ?li — 12 January 1911

Fahri Pa?a received him alone, in the large room with the tall windows, and asked at once what had been said at Y?ld?z.

Ayaan gave him a plain account. He described the ledger, the price that was nearly double the price of the Ministry, Tahsin Bey’s remark upon gratitude, and the trial order of two thousand reams.

He ended with the secretary’s warning that a person above the room had asked about the stationer known to the Minister.

The old man listened without moving, with his spectacles pushed up into his white hair.

"I did not ask you to tell me this so that I should be alarmed," he said at last. "I asked so that someone in the Empire should know it besides yourself."

"Pa?a, I am obliged to you."

"You are not obliged. You are being used, which is a different thing, and I am telling you so honestly." Fahri Pa?a crossed to the window. "Do you know what I have learned in a year as Minister?"

"I should like to hear it, Pa?a."

"The revolution opened every door in the city, and all the merchants came through together." He spoke slowly, looking down upon the courtyard. "Some brought goods, and some brought petitions, and I find that the petitions are the more numerous."

"What do the petitions ask?"

"Protection. A man who sells a bad lamp asks that the lamp of the foreigner be taxed, and a man who has never built a mill asks for a monopoly of the mill." He turned back. "The Chamber will debate the new schedule of import duties in the spring, and every association in the city will arrive with a speech."

Ayaan considered this, and then he said what he had been turning over since November.

"Pa?a, a duty is not wrong in itself. A young industry cannot always stand against an old one, and a state may reasonably give it time."

"Time. Yes."

"But the time must be named. If a mill is protected for five years, the duty should fall on a stated day, and the Ministry should publish the price of the mill’s goods each year, so that the Chamber can see whether the protection is producing a better product or only a richer owner."

Fahri Pa?a was silent for some moments.

"A duty that ends upon a day written in the law," he said. "The Chamber will not like it."

"The Chamber will not, and the merchants will like it less, Pa?a, which is the reason that it is honest."

The old man gave a short laugh, and then he took a pen from the desk and held it out toward him.

"Write me a single page upon how a protective duty should be set. I shall not say whose hand wrote it, and I shall say that it came from the commission."

"It will have to be Zeynep Han?m’s hand as well as mine, Pa?a. She reads the figures more closely than I."

"Then it will be the commission’s hand," said the Minister, "and the commission is honoured."

III

Constantinople, Galata, the Ottoman Bank — 19 January 1911

The director of the Constantinople branch was a precise Frenchman named Barrault, with a pointed grey beard and a room that smelled of lamp oil and leather.

Agop Kalfayan sat at Zeynep’s right hand, small and unhurried, with his spectacles in his fingers. Ayaan sat at her left, and he had agreed beforehand that he would not speak.

"The Bank is pleased to propose," said Barrault, "a line of credit of two thousand liras at eight in the hundred, in return for which the House would transfer the whole of its accounts to the Bank."

He addressed the sentence to Ayaan.

"The House will answer," said Ayaan, "but it is Zeynep Han?m who will do so."

Barrault’s brows rose slightly, and he turned his chair a little toward her.

"Monsieur Barrault, I thank you for the offer." Zeynep laid a single sheet upon the table. "We shall decline the whole of the accounts, because the House does not place all of its reserve in one vault, and we shall decline eight in the hundred, because I have here the rate that the Bank gave to the Ministry’s printers last year."

"Madame, that is a confidential figure."

"It was told to me by the printers, who were not told that it was confidential." She did not smile. "We shall place one part in three of our reserve with the Bank, and we shall draw a line of six hundred liras at seven in the hundred, secured upon our receipts from the Ministry."

"Six hundred is a modest sum."

"It is the sum that we shall use. A line larger than the use of it is a temptation that the House does not require."

Barrault looked at Agop Kalfayan.

"Monsieur Kalfayan, is the lady always so direct?"

"She is," said the old sarraf placidly. "I have found it a great saving of time."

The director was silent, and he turned the sheet over, and he read the figures on the back in search of a flaw.

"The Bank is not accustomed to being instructed in its terms," he said.

"The Bank is accustomed to being paid," said Zeynep. "I propose that we begin with that."

He laughed, briefly and with some surprise, and then he drew a pen toward him.

On the stair afterward, Agop Kalfayan paused with one hand upon the rail.

"In forty years I have seen a director accept a clause that he did not write perhaps three times," he said. "This morning was the third."

"She did it very well," said Ayaan.

"You did it very well also, Efendi, by being silent." The old man shook his head. "A younger man would have spoken, and the Frenchman would have answered him, and the lady would have been a guest at her own table."

Zeynep, who had come down behind them, put on her gloves with a composed face.

"Agop Efendi, I should be glad if you would say that to my husband at least once a month."

IV

Constantinople, Kas?mpa?a — 27 January 1911

The professor of physics arrived at the foundry in a hired carriage, with two wooden cases upon the seat beside him and a look of anxious hope.

His name was Mazhar Bey, and he was a stooped man of fifty in a black frock coat, with chalk upon his sleeve that he had not noticed.

"I have been teaching the laws of light for twenty years," he said, "and I have been showing my students a diagram upon a board, because the University has not been able to buy the instrument."

"Why has it not been able?" asked Ayaan.

"The instruments are made in Paris and in Jena, and they cost four times what they should, and they arrive after a year, and half of them arrive broken." Mazhar Bey opened the first case. "I have brought my drawings. I am told that your master brass-finisher is the best in the city."

?smail Usta took the drawings in his great scarred hands and bent over them without a word.

He studied them for a long time, and Halil R?fat came to stand at his shoulder.

"A balance, a graduated circle, and a bench for the lenses," said ?smail at last. "The balance and the bench I can make in six weeks. The circle I cannot make well, Efendi, because I cannot divide it truly."

"Can it be divided at all?" said the professor.

"It can be divided by a machine." Halil R?fat tapped the page. "The principle of our ruling engine is the same, Efendi, and I believe it can be adapted, though it will cost us three months and a good deal of spoiled brass."

Mazhar Bey looked from one to the other, and Ayaan saw that he did not dare to hope for it.

"I cannot pay for spoiled brass," he said. "The University’s grant would not cover it."

"The House will bear the spoiled brass," said Ayaan. "We shall charge you the cost of the metal and the wages of the men, and nothing for the failures."

"And in return?"

"In return, I ask a small thing." Ayaan nodded toward the stair that led to the school. "Eleven boys are learning to read a drawing in the room above. I should like them to attend two of your lectures in each week, if the University will permit it."

The professor stared at him.

"You wish to be paid in lectures?"

"In part. The boys will not be physicists, Efendi, but they will make better instruments for every physicist who comes after you, if they understand what the instrument is for."

Mazhar Bey took off his spectacles, and he wiped them slowly upon his chalky sleeve.

"I have waited twenty years for someone to say that to me," he said. "I shall ask the Rector tomorrow."

?smail Usta, who had said nothing, laid the drawing down upon the bench with a care that was almost tender.

"I shall make the first balance with my own hands," he said gruffly. "I shall not have it said that the first physical instrument cast in this city was spoiled by an apprentice."

V

Constantinople, üsküdar — 8 February 1911

On this evening, for the first time in their acquaintance, Cevdet poured the tea himself.

He did it without remark, and he set the glass before Ayaan, and he sat down behind the long desk with his own.

"The Berlin firm has written to you a second time," he said.

"Yesterday. They propose that a representative visit the House in March, a Herr Brandt, to discuss what they call a friendly exchange of technical information."

"Then you have your answer to what they want." The scarred man turned his glass slowly. "Receive him in the shop, at the front table, and in the afternoon. Do not take him to Kas?mpa?a, and do not show him a single drawing that is not in the catalogue."

"I had intended to do exactly that."

"I know. I say it so that you will know that I have also thought of it."

Cevdet’s dry tone did not change, but he was a little slower than usual in going on.

"There is something else, and it is not part of our arrangement."

Ayaan waited.

"The person who has asked about you in the Palace is not a secretary. He is a man of the Mabeyn, in the household of the Sultan, who keeps a list of those whom the Ministers trust." Cevdet lifted his glass and set it down again. "I do not know his purpose. I know only that he has your name, and that he has not yet decided what to do with it."

"Why do you tell me this, Efendi, when I did not ask?"

"Because in September we agreed that neither of us would ask the other for anything that he would be ashamed to ask before the Sultan." The scarred man’s gaze was steady. "I find that a man who offers a warning unasked does not break that agreement, and I have discovered that I prefer to be a man of that kind."

For a moment neither of them spoke.

"I shall give you something in return," said Ayaan. "It is nothing of state. It is only a figure."

"Give it."

"The Chief Secretariat pays nearly twice the Ministry’s price for its paper, and it has done so for at least three years." Ayaan drew breath. "Whoever has profited from that difference will be unfriendly to any person who has measured it, and he may try to say that the measurer wished to profit instead."

Cevdet was quiet for some time.

"That is a very useful figure," he said at last. "It tells me what Tahsin Bey will say before he has said it."

"I thought that it might."

"You are a careful young man." The scarred man rose, and he went to a shelf, and he took down a catalogue bound in cracked leather. "I have a request of my own, and I confess that it is a small one."

He laid the volume open upon the desk. The pages had darkened and begun to crumble at the edges.

"The retired pasha will not spend a kuru? upon the catalogue of his library, and the paper is failing. I should like to copy it upon good paper before it is lost, and I should like to pay for ten reams myself."

"I shall sell them to you at the price of the Ministry’s schedule," said Ayaan, "which is public, and which anyone may read."

"Naturally." The faintest trace of a smile crossed the scarred face. "A man may be corrupted by a ream of paper only if he is ashamed of the price."

VI

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 14 February 1911

Hac? Arif Efendi sent for him to the stationers’ coffee-house, and he was waiting at a corner table with a folded paper beside his cup.

"Sit, young man. I shall not keep you long, but I wish you to hear it from me and not from the street."

Ayaan sat, and the old guildsman pushed the paper across the table.

"It is a petition to the Palace, signed by thirty-one stationers of the city," said Hac? Arif. "It asks that the Chief Secretariat buy only Ottoman paper, and it was carried from shop to shop by the merchant Vlastos of Pera."

"I have heard of it, Efendi."

"Then you have not heard that I refused to sign." The old man stirred his coffee slowly. "He came to my shop himself, in a very good overcoat, and he spoke for a quarter of an hour upon the duty of every Ottoman to his own country."

"And what did you answer?"

"I asked him how many reams of Ottoman paper he had sold to the Palace in ten years." Hac? Arif smiled without warmth. "He said that it was not the question, and I said that it was the only question."

Ayaan looked down the column of names, and he recognised the shops that bought their stock through the Pera warehouse.

"Of the thirty-one, I have counted twenty-six who owe him money," said the old guildsman. "A man will sign a great deal for a creditor, and he will call it patriotism afterward."

"Efendi, the principle in the petition is not false."

"No, and that is what makes it dangerous." Hac? Arif tapped the paper. "A lie can be answered, but a true principle used for a false purpose must be answered with a better use of the same principle."

"I intend to answer it with the bid."

"Then answer it well." The old man finished his coffee and set down the cup with a small, decided sound. "Since the revolution, every merchant in this city has learned to speak of the nation, and I think that it will take twenty years to learn which of them meant it."

VII

Constantinople, Y?ld?z Palace, the Chief Secretariat — 20 February 1911

Rag?p Bey did not rise this time, and he did not offer a chair, and Ayaan understood from this that someone might be listening in the corridor.

"The trial order has been received and counted," said the secretary in a flat, official voice. "It has been tested against your sample, and the paper is found to be as described."

"I am glad of it, Efendi."

"The Chief Secretariat has now received a petition." Rag?p Bey turned a sheet toward him, and his eyes said something that his voice did not. "It is signed by the merchant Vlastos of Pera, and it states that the House of Hassan supplies paper of foreign manufacture, and that the Palace should buy only paper made by Ottoman mills."

Ayaan read the petition slowly.

It was well written, and it was patriotic in its language, and it did not contain a single figure.

"It is not an unreasonable principle, Efendi," he said. "Where an Ottoman mill can supply the quality, the Palace should certainly buy from it."

"Tahsin Bey has endorsed the petition."

"I expected that he would."

"Did you?" For the first time the secretary looked up, and there was relief in his tired face. "I had thought that you would be angry."

"I am not angry. The petition is right in its principle and wrong in its purpose, and the way to answer it is to let the Palace decide upon the facts."

Rag?p Bey leaned a little closer, and he lowered his voice to the smallest sound that could still be heard.

"Then I shall tell you what I propose, and you may refuse it. The full year’s supply of twelve thousand reams will be offered by open tender among three houses, and every bidder must state the mill and the country of each grade of paper."

"The House will bid, Efendi, and gladly."

"There is the difficulty." The secretary tapped the petition. "Can the mill at ?zmit supply the finest grade, the sort that is used for the private correspondence of the Palace?"

Ayaan did not answer at once.

It would have been easy to say yes. The mill-master Nikolaos Efendi had told him in January that a fine sheet was possible, and Zeynep believed it, and Ayaan believed it himself.

But it is not yet made, and I will not sell what does not exist.

"Not yet, Efendi," he said. "The mill makes a good middle grade today, and I believe that it will make a fine grade by the autumn, but I cannot promise it in writing before I have seen it."

"Then what will you bid?"

"The middle grades from ?zmit, which is Ottoman, and the finest grade from Vienna until the mill can replace it, and I shall state the origin of each sheet upon the face of the bid." Ayaan met his eyes. "If the Palace wishes the Ottoman mill to grow, it may agree to buy the fine grade from the mill when it is ready, at a price fixed in advance."

Rag?p Bey sat back, and for a moment the strain left his face entirely.

"Tahsin Bey will say that it is a weakness to admit that you cannot supply everything."

"Then he will be obliged to read the bid, Efendi," said Ayaan, "and I think that it will be difficult for him to find a falsehood in it."

VIII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 4 March 1911

The bid was finished on the first Saturday of March, in the upper room, with the lamps lit in the afternoon because of the rain.

Zeynep sat at the table with the costings spread in four columns, and Mehmed, who was nearly seven months old, lay upon a folded rug at her feet and examined his own hand.

"The ?zmit paper gives us the margin that we need upon the middle grades," she said. "The Vienna paper gives us almost none, because the carriage and the exchange take the rest."

"And the fine grade from the mill, if it succeeds?"

"If it succeeds in October, as Nikolaos Efendi writes, the margin upon that grade will be the best in the whole order." She tapped a letter beside the columns. "He asks that the House buy the first two thousand reams from his new press at a fixed price, so that he may order the felts and the chemicals."

"It is a risk."

"It is a risk that I wish to take, and I have set the limit." She wrote a figure at the foot of the column. "If the first lot is below the Palace grade, we shall bear the loss from the venture account and not from the reserve."

Ayaan read the figure, and he read it again.

"It is within the rule," he said. "I accept it."

"You are not to say that as though you were granting me a favour." She looked up. "It is my page, and you have read it, and that is the whole of the rule."

"It is your page, and you have read mine."

"Yes." She smiled for the first time that afternoon. "That is a good partnership, and I should not wish to give it up for anything the Palace could offer."

He signed the bid in the House’s name, and Elias sealed it, and it was placed in the cedar box to wait for the morning.

A knock sounded at the lower door while the wax was still warm, and Yakup came up the stair with a folded note in his hand.

"A man left it, Efendi. He did not give a name, and he did not wait."

Ayaan knew the hand before he had opened it, for the strokes were slow and exact. The note was short.

Tahsin Bey dined on Thursday at the table of Herr Brandt, at a house in Pera. I do not believe in coincidence in a city of this size.

He passed it across, and Zeynep read it twice.

"The Palace tender and the Berlin firm," she said, "in the same month, and now a Palace official at the German’s table."

"Someone is trying to draw a line between them and us." Ayaan took the note back and held it to the lamp. "I do not yet know which end of the line holds the pen."

"Then we shall find out before the tender is opened."

"We shall, and we shall do it by the rule."

"Read every page before we turn it," said Zeynep.

Mehmed made a small sound upon the rug, and she lifted him against her shoulder, and he fell silent at once.

Ayaan watched the paper curl in the flame, and then he took the notebook, and he wrote beneath the date of that day.

The new age opens every door in the city to every merchant who can pay.

It opens them also to those who wish to pay for something other than paper.