Chapter 43: Wholesale Expansion

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Wholesale Expansion

I

Constantinople, Y?ld?z Palace, the Mabeyn — 28 June 1911

?ükrü Bey received him in a small room with a single tall window that looked out upon a garden of clipped box and white gravel.

He was a man of about fifty-five, with a soft voice, a grey beard cut close, and a manner so quiet that the two attendants at the door seemed louder than he.

"Hassan Efendi, please sit. I shall not detain you long, and I shall not ask you anything that is not already written."

"I am at your service, Efendi."

"His Majesty has seen your schedule of prices." ?ükrü Bey laid the printed sheet upon the low table between them. "He read it twice, and he made a remark which I was asked to repeat to you."

Ayaan kept his hands still upon his knees.

"He said that a price which is written cannot be whispered."

For a moment Ayaan did not trust himself to answer.

"It is a very exact remark, Efendi," he said at last. "I have been trying for a year to say the same thing, and I did not find the words."

"Many men have wished to say it, and few have printed it." The secretary folded his hands. "I should like to learn how you came to do so."

"The Ministry’s paper account and the Palace’s paper account were not compared, Efendi, and I compared them. Any clerk could have done the same with the same ledgers."

"Few clerks would have done it."

"Few clerks are permitted to, and fewer are rewarded for it." Ayaan inclined his head. "I do not say it in complaint. I say it because it is the only reason that I was the first."

?ükrü Bey was silent for some time, and the attendants did not move.

"Suppose that the Palace wished to buy all of its stationery, its ink, and its printing apparatus by a published schedule," he said. "How would it be done?"

"There would be an office for purchase, Efendi, with a registered clerk, and a ledger audited by a person who does not belong to the household." Ayaan spoke slowly. "Tenders would be opened each year before witnesses, and the prices would be printed, and any supplier who gave a gift to any official would be struck from the list."

"And would the House of Hassan bid for such a supply?"

"For the paper, Efendi, but not for the office itself. A merchant who sits upon the committee that awards his own contract has made himself a thief, whatever his intentions."

The secretary smiled for the first time, and the smile was very slight.

"His Majesty has asked me to send a modest order to your House for the Mabeyn, one thousand reams of the fine grade, at the price of your schedule." He lifted a hand before Ayaan could speak. "It is not a favour, and I am instructed to say so."

"I accept it as a purchase, Efendi."

"You are also instructed to expect no gift. His Majesty does not give gifts to stationers." ?ükrü Bey rose. "He gives his attention, which is rarer, and in the long run more costly."

"I understand."

"I wonder whether you do." The secretary walked with him to the door. "A man who is seen by the Palace is seen by everyone, Hassan Efendi, and for the coming year you will have friends whom you have never met."

II

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 5 July 1911

Hac? Arif Efendi listened to the whole plan in silence, with his coffee cooling at his elbow, and then he asked only one question.

"You are going to sell to the stationers of the provinces directly?"

"At a published wholesale schedule, Efendi, with three prices according to the quantity." Ayaan spread a sheet upon the table. "At present a stationer in Konya or Sivas buys from a Constantinople middleman, who buys from another, and by the time the paper reaches him the price has risen by a quarter."

"And you propose to remove the quarter."

"I propose to divide it, and to leave some of it with the stationer who needs it."

The old guildsman considered this with his chin upon his hand.

"The Sirkeci men will say that you intend to swallow them," he said. "A great house with a warehouse, a mill, and a Palace contract does not sell to the provinces for the love of the provinces."

"It does not, and I shall not pretend that it does."

"Good. I should not believe you if you did." Hac? Arif tapped the sheet. "Tell me what you will not do."

"The House will not open a second retail shop in the city, Efendi, and it will not sell to any customer below the schedule, and it will not give any customer a private price." Ayaan drew breath. "The stationers of Sirkeci will buy at the same schedule as the stationer of Konya, so that none of them is disadvantaged by being near."

"That is something, but it is not enough." The old man leaned back. "A merchant who is given an equal price is still a merchant who has no voice."

"What would you propose?"

"That the guild form a purchasing association, and buy together, and receive the lowest tier of your schedule at the quantity of the whole." Hac? Arif’s eyes were shrewd. "A rival who buys from you through a guild is not a rival, Hassan Efendi. He is a customer with a vote."

Ayaan was silent for a moment, because the idea was better than his own.

"It would cost the House a little in the first year," he said.

"It would cost you a little, and it would save you a war." The guildsman smiled thinly. "I ask one thing more. Each quarter, a man of the guild shall witness the weighing of the stock, and shall sign the book."

"I shall be glad of it, Efendi. It is the proper check upon the House, and I should have asked for it myself."

"You would have asked for it in the third year. I ask it in the first." Hac? Arif took up the cold coffee and drank it without a flicker. "It is the difference between an old man and a young one."

III

Constantinople, Emin?nü, the Rüstem Pa?a warehouse — 20 July 1911

The wholesale branch of the House opened on a Thursday morning in the long vaulted warehouse that Ayaan had leased two years before, with the stock stacked in tall ordered rows and the schedule of prices painted upon a board beside the door.

The first buyer to enter was a stout, wary man in a travelling coat, who read the board from top to bottom before he took a step further.

"Salih Efendi, of Konya," he said, to the clerk who came forward. "I have come to buy three hundred reams, and slates, and ledgers, and I wish to know whether the price upon the board is the price that I shall pay."

"It is, Efendi," said Elias. "The Han?m will arrange the account."

Salih Efendi turned, and he looked at the small table in the corner with the lamp, the ledger, and the seated woman, and his expression changed.

"I did not know that there was to be a lady."

"Salih Efendi, I am Zeynep Han?m, and I keep the accounts of the House." She did not rise, but she indicated the chair opposite. "You may buy for cash at the board price, with four in the hundred discount, or you may buy upon sixty days’ credit if you will show me the sum of your purchases for the last year."

"My purchases are my own affair."

"They are, Efendi, and you need not show them." Zeynep’s voice was perfectly pleasant. "In that case you will pay in cash, and you will have the discount, and you will find that it is a very fair arrangement."

He sat down heavily, and his suspicion was plain upon his broad face.

"In Konya I buy my paper from a man in Constantinople who has never told me his price until the bill came. I do not know what the bill will be until I have signed it."

"Here the bill is upon the board." She turned the ledger toward him. "You may count the reams yourself, and Elias Efendi will count them with you, and when you leave you will have a receipt that states what you have bought and what you paid."

Salih Efendi counted three hundred reams with his own hands, and he counted the slates, and he counted the ledgers twice.

He paid in gold, and the sum was a hundred and twenty liras less than he had paid the year before for the same goods.

"I do not understand," he said slowly, looking at the receipt. "Where is the profit of the House?"

"It is in the quantity, Efendi, and in the fact that you will return," said Zeynep. "A stationer who is treated fairly in his first order will make a second."

Ayaan, who had been watching from the end of the aisle, came forward.

"Salih Efendi, I should tell you that the stationer of Sirkeci pays the same price as the stationer of Konya. It is written upon the board, and anyone may read it."

"In Konya we are always at the end of the line," said the big man. He folded the receipt carefully and placed it in his coat. "I shall tell them that there is a line here, and that it begins with whoever arrives."

IV

Constantinople, Galata — 27 July 1911

Agop Kalfayan received them in the small back room of his counting-house, where the shutters were half closed against the heat and a single clerk copied figures in the corner.

Upon the table lay a bundle of papers tied with red tape, and the old sarraf laid his small dry hand upon it.

"These are the bills of exchange that the House has taken from its provincial customers in the first week, Han?m. I wish to show you how to read them."

"I have read them, Agop Efendi."

"You have read the sums. I wish to show you how to read the names." He drew one from the bundle. "Here is a bill upon a stationer of Sivas for forty liras at sixty days. Who stands behind his signature?"

"No one," said Zeynep slowly. "He signs for himself."

"Then the bill is worth what the man is worth, which is a thing that you do not know." Agop took a second bill. "This one is upon a stationer of Edirne, and a corn merchant of the same town has written his name upon the back. The corn merchant is known in Galata, and I would discount that bill at eight in the hundred this afternoon."

"And the first?"

"I should discount the first at twelve, if I should take it at all."

Zeynep made a note, and she was silent for some time over it.

"Then the credit of the House is no better than the credit of its worst bill," she said. "I had not seen it so plainly."

"Nobody sees it so plainly until they have lost something. I should prefer that you learn it in my room than in your own." The old man leaned back. "Take a second name upon every bill above thirty liras, and the House will sleep well."

He turned to Ayaan then, and his voice dropped a little.

"There is another matter, Efendi, and it is not about paper."

"I am listening."

"Since the middle of July, three Italian houses in Galata have been calling in their short loans, quietly, a little at a time." Agop’s eyes did not move from Ayaan’s face. "They give reasons that are perfectly good, and there are three of them, and I do not like the number."

Ayaan felt the room grow very still.

In the first life, the Italian fleet sailed against Tripoli in the autumn of this year. I do not know whether it will sail in this one.

I know only that the cause of such things does not change as quickly as their date.

"I thank you for telling me, Agop Efendi," he said. "I do not ask what you think."

"I think that a prudent house should hold more of its reserve in coin than it has done, and should hold it before the autumn."

When they had left the counting-house, Zeynep walked beside him in the narrow street, with her veil drawn against the dust.

"You were not surprised," she said quietly.

"I was not surprised that he mentioned it."

"Is it a thing that you know?"

"It is a thing that I fear, and I do not yet know whether it will be so." He kept his eyes upon the cobbles. "Will you move a third of the cash reserve into the strong room this month, and say nothing of the reason?"

"I shall do it tomorrow." She did not ask the question again. "And I shall wait until you are ready to tell me the rest."

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 9 August 1911

On the first birthday of Mehmed, the family gathered in the upper room, where the table was spread with a small meal and the window was open to the evening air.

Mustafa sat in the great chair with the child upon his knee, and Ayaan’s father, Mehmet Hassan, sat beside him with a wooden toy that he had carved himself.

Zeynep brought a dish of sweet rice to the table, and the boy, who had been standing at the edge of a stool for most of the afternoon, let go and took three unsteady steps across the rug.

No one spoke, and then the whole room cried out together.

"Allah preserve him," said Mehmet Hassan, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

Mustafa lifted the boy and gave him a small abacus with beads of polished walnut, and the child at once began to push them from one end of the wire to the other.

"He will be a merchant," said Mustafa. "I have never seen anyone take to a counting frame so quickly."

"He will be whatever he wishes to be," said Zeynep, "provided that he first learns to read a page."

Afterward, when the plates had been cleared, Mustafa drew Ayaan to the window and spoke quietly, so that the women should not hear.

"The trustees of the school fund have read the quarter’s report. It is very clean, and I have nothing to criticise, and I find that this alarms me."

"Baba, I do not understand."

"A man who has nothing to criticise has stopped looking." The old man gazed down at the lamps along the quay. "You have opened a house that sells to a hundred shops, and each of them will bring its own difficulty. A tree with a hundred branches must be pruned each spring, or it will fall in the first storm."

"I shall remember it."

"Remember it in the third year, when you are tired." Mustafa patted his shoulder. "Now go and be a father, because the boy is trying to eat the abacus."

VI

Constantinople, üsküdar — 23 August 1911

Cevdet had not lit the lamp, though the room was already dim, and he did not rise from his chair when Ayaan was shown in.

"Sit," he said. "I have three pieces of news, and I shall give you the small ones first."

"As you wish, Efendi."

"Herr Brandt left for Berlin by the Orient train on the fourteenth. He did not leave a successor, and I find that more interesting than his departure." The scarred man turned his hand. "Tahsin Bey has been transferred to the registry of the imperial stables."

"Is that a punishment?"

"It is a promotion in title and a removal from every account that concerns money." Cevdet’s tone was dry. "I did nothing. The paper that I keep has not left my desk, and the credit belongs to Rag?p Bey’s committee record, which recorded exactly what was said."

Ayaan was quiet.

"You do not seem pleased."

"I am glad that he is removed, Efendi. I am sorry that it is not a better ending for him."

"You are a curious young man." The scarred man’s gaze moved to the window, where the last light lay across the shelves. "The third piece of news is my own."

He said nothing more for a time, and when he spoke, his voice was lower.

"The pasha is dying. The physician says that it will be perhaps three months, and the heirs have already begun to speak of selling the library to a dealer in Paris."

"I am sorry, Efendi."

"I was his keeper for eleven years, and I put the catalogue in order, and I know where every volume stands." Cevdet’s hand moved across the desk and stopped. "When he dies, I lose my post, my cover, and the only roof that I have had that was not given to me by the service."

Ayaan thought for a moment, and then he said what he had decided upon the road.

"The school of the House has a room, Efendi, and no library. It has eleven boys who have never read any book that was not a primer, and a professor of physics who has promised to send them his duplicates."

The scarred man looked at him.

"It needs a keeper who can order a collection, who reads six languages, and who will not be shocked if a boy spills ink upon a manuscript." Ayaan paused. "The salary would be that of an engineer of the first grade, and the post would be for as long as you wished it."

Cevdet was silent for so long that the lamps along the street were lit before he moved.

"I have not been offered an honest post in a very long time," he said. "It is a difficult thing to answer."

"You need not answer tonight."

"I shall answer in the autumn." The scarred man rose, and for the third time he held out his hand. "But I shall say this, Hassan Efendi. I have never before been asked to keep books for the sake of the boys who would read them."

VII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 September 1911

Zeynep laid the quarterly summary upon the table at nine in the morning, and Ayaan read it standing, with his coat still upon his arm.

In seven weeks the wholesale branch had opened accounts with seventy-one provincial stationers, and had sold twenty-one hundred liras of goods, and had three accounts overdue.

"Three out of seventy-one is better than I expected," he said.

"It is better than I expected, and it is three too many." She pointed to a line. "The stationer of Sivas has paid nothing for sixty-four days, and I have written to him twice. The stationer of Ayd?n is behind by a month, but his letter is honest, and I have extended him a fortnight."

"And the third?"

"The third is a man whom I refused credit in July because he would not show his ledger, and who has since defaulted upon a debt in Ankara." She closed the summary. "He paid cash, and we are not out a kuru?, and I do not say it to boast."

"Say it a little."

"I shall say it a little." She smiled. "The purchasing association of the Sirkeci stationers has bought six hundred reams at the lowest tier, and Hac? Arif Efendi witnessed the weighing himself and signed the book with a very sour face."

Elias knocked and put his head into the room.

"Efendi, the gentleman from Beirut has arrived."

He was a spare, courteous man of about forty named Haddad, whose family firm had won a lot in the school tender the previous autumn, and he came in carrying a small flat case and bowing to each of them in turn.

"Hassan Efendi, Han?m, I have come to propose a thing that you may refuse." He opened the case upon the table. "My house wishes to represent the House of Hassan in Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo."

"Upon what terms?" asked Zeynep, before Ayaan could speak.

"Upon any terms that the Han?m may wish." He bowed to her. "I have heard of her contracts."

"Then the terms are these." She drew a clean sheet toward her. "The representation is not exclusive, because I will not bind the House to a single agent in three cities. Goods will not be held upon consignment. Payment will be by draft upon the Ottoman Bank at Beirut, and the stock will be counted each quarter by a person that we name."

Haddad read the sheet when she had written it, slowly, with his lips moving.

"I have never signed a contract with a lady," he said. "I believe that I prefer it. It has fewer sentences that mean something other than what they say."

He signed in a neat, rounded hand, and Zeynep signed beneath him.

When he had gone, Ayaan sat down and let out his breath.

"You have made the House into an empire of three cities in a single morning."

"I have made it a customer of a good man in three cities," said Zeynep. "The empire, if there is to be one, will take longer."

VIII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 3 October 1911

Nikolaos Efendi came up from ?zmit by the night boat, with a flat wooden box under his arm and a face that was red with the cold and with something else.

He did not speak until the box lay upon the back table, and then he threw back the lid.

"Fifty reams," he said, "from the first vat that I have weighed upon the board. I have not touched a sheet. I wished that you should test them with your own hands."

Zeynep took the first sheet and held it to the window, and Ayaan took the second, and between them they went through the written test that she had set in April.

They weighed it, and they measured the thickness, and they laid a line of ink along the left edge and the right edge and watched it for a count of sixty.

The ink did not spread. It lay upon the paper in a thin, sharp line, as clean at one edge as at the other.

"The sizing is even," said Zeynep softly.

"The weight of the sheet is exact," said Ayaan.

"It is the Palace grade." She set the sheet down and looked at the mill-master. "Nikolaos Efendi, you have done it, and you did it in five months."

The old man’s great hands shook a little, and he sat down upon the nearest stool.

"I had a foreman who called me a fool," he said. "I shall not give him a raise, but I shall give him a very large dinner."

Ayaan took a clean sheet from the box, wrote a short note to Rag?p Bey, and folded it into the paper.

The mill at Hamidiye is now able to supply the fine grade at the price agreed. The Palace may exercise the clause of purchase from an Ottoman mill at its pleasure.

"Elias Efendi will carry it to Y?ld?z this afternoon," he said. "It is the first time that a Palace clause has been fulfilled before the day that it was written for."

"It was fulfilled because of the board," said Nikolaos Efendi. "I shall write it upon my gravestone."

When the mill-master had gone to find his breakfast, Zeynep gathered the sheets into the box and shut the lid with great care.

"Seventy-one provincial stationers, a house in Beirut, a mill that makes the Palace grade, and a school with a library to come." She counted them upon her fingers. "It is a very large thing for a year and a half."

"It is, and it travels farther than we do." Ayaan looked out of the window at the crowded quay. "Every ream that leaves this warehouse carries our name to a town that we have never seen, and a name is carried faster than a price."

"What do you fear?"

"I do not fear it. I only wish to remember that when the House is known in every province, it will also be spoken of in every province, by friends and enemies alike."

"Then we shall make it a name that can bear speaking of." She laid her hand upon the box. "And we shall read every page before we turn it."

That night he opened the notebook, and beneath the date he wrote one line.

The House has reached the provinces. Let it never be able to say that it reached them by a lie.