Chapter 61: First State Proposal

Chapter 61: Chapter 61: First State Proposal

I

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 2 February 1916

Ayaan spread eleven sheets of blank paper upon the study table and wrote a heading at the top of each.

Zeynep read the headings over his shoulder and counted them aloud.

"Weights, boards, receipts, the witness, the fines, the cost, the towns, the governors, the Treasury, the guilds, and the first year," she said. "It is a good order, but you have left out the one that will decide it."

"Which is that?"

"The question of who pays, for the Ministry will read that page first and the rest afterwards." She drew a twelfth sheet toward her and wrote the word in her own hand. "A state does not refuse a good idea, Ayaan, but it refuses a bill that it cannot see."

Ayaan nodded and laid the twelfth sheet at the head of the pile.

"Then every page shall carry a figure that a clerk of the Ministry may check, and the cost shall be on the first page and not the last," he said. "We shall write to Smyrna and Konya tonight, and ask what a town of twenty thousand people needs."

"And I shall ask Agop Efendi what a town of twenty thousand people can bear," said Zeynep.

"Ask him also what a governor can bear, for a governor reads a circular with a different eye," said Ayaan. "I would rather answer his objection in the memorandum than in the corridor."

Zeynep wrote both questions upon a card and set it beside the lamp.

II

Constantinople, Galata — 9 February 1916

Agop Kalfayan read the draft costs with a pencil in his hand and his spectacles low upon his nose.

"Four kuru? for each stamped weight, one lira for each witness’s yearly book, and thirty-eight liras for each town’s brass set from the Darülfünun," he said. "It is fair, and it is also the kind of sum that a provincial treasurer will wish to share."

"We have written that the fines shall stay with the guild of each town," said Zeynep.

"You have written it, Han?m, but a treasurer reads a line like that and sees only the fines." He tapped the page. "In Constantinople, the Ministry is troubled by the guild’s money, and in the provinces the governor is troubled by the empty treasury."

"What would you propose?"

"That a tenth of each fine be paid to the town treasury, written plainly in the circular, so that the governor has a reason to protect the witness and no reason to take his book."

Zeynep wrote the figure in the margin and underlined it twice.

"A tenth is a price that the guilds will pay, and the governors will not need to ask for more," she said. "I did not think of it, Agop Efendi."

"You thought of the fines, and I thought of the governors, and that is why the House keeps an old sarraf," said Agop, and he smiled over the top of his spectacles.

III

Constantinople, Darülfünun — 15 February 1916

Mazhar Bey stood among forty small brass sets that his students had arranged in rows along the laboratory floor.

Each set held a pan, five weights, a litre measure and a printed card in three scripts.

"The Darülfünun can make forty sets by the first of June if the House supplies the brass and the printing," he said. "I would send each set with a student who has finished the second year, to teach the witness how to test and how to write the book."

"What will the students be paid?" asked Ayaan.

"Their journey and their lodging, and a certificate that the Darülfünun will sign." The professor lifted a litre measure and turned it in the light. "A young man who has carried a standard to Konya will not forget what it is for."

"The House will pay the brass, and the Ministry may pay the journeys if it wishes, but we shall write both as proposals," said Ayaan. "A reform that is paid for by one purse may be closed by one purse."

"Choose the two who are most patient, and tell them that the witness is often an old man who has never read a printed card," said Ayaan. "They must teach him without showing it."

Mazhar Bey laughed softly and set the measure down.

"I shall send a list of the students on Monday, and I shall be careful to include two from the provinces," he said. "They will be listened to when a boy from the city would not."

IV

Constantinople, Galata — 22 February 1916

Samuel Aboab read the letters from the provinces aloud in the office, for Hasan of Konya had written four pages and Haddad of Beirut only one.

"The guild elders of Konya will accept the stamped weight, but they ask that the fine be paid in grain to the poor of the town and not in coin," he said. "They say that the poor of Konya have no use for the treasury."

"It is a gentle custom, and I think that the House should not forbid it," said Zeynep. "The circular may allow the guild to say how a fine is paid, so long as the amount is written in the book."

"Smyrna writes that the Greek and Levantine merchants wish for receipts in French as well," said Samuel. "And Beirut asks that the witness be a man of the local guild and not a clerk sent from the city."

Ayaan listened with his hands folded upon the table.

"The memorandum shall say that every town chooses its own witness and writes its own custom," he said. "The state may recognise the code, but the town must own it, and the circular must say so in the first article."

"Then it will not be one code but forty codes with one stamp," said Zeynep.

"It will be one code that forty towns can keep, and I would sooner have that." Ayaan wrote a line upon the margin. "A single rule that is hated in the provinces is not a rule for long."

V

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 27 February 1916

The lamp burned late in the study, for the memorandum had reached its last page and the clock in the hall had struck one.

Ayaan read the final article aloud, and Zeynep followed it with her finger upon the fair copy.

"The printing of receipts shall be entrusted to a house recognised by the guild," he read. "It is a small clause, and it will save the towns the trouble of choosing."

Zeynep put down her pen and looked at him.

"Which house do you imagine the guild will recognise?" she asked.

"The House of Hassan has the press and the paper, and it has printed the receipts for the Emin?nü guilds at the stationers’ cost."

"It has printed them because no one else would, and it is not the same as asking to print them for forty towns." She turned the page toward him. "The visitors’ book would not forgive this clause, and neither would Cevdet Efendi."

Ayaan read the clause again, and he found that he had written it without seeing it.

"I did not intend it as a request," he said. "But I see that a clerk of the Treasury would read it as one."

"Then strike it, and let the guilds choose their own printer," said Zeynep gently. "If the House is the best printer, the towns will find it without a clause."

He drew a line through the article, and he wrote the new wording above it in a clean hand.

VI

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 1 March 1916

Ayaan carried the memorandum to the Ministry of Commerce in a grey folder, with Samuel Aboab at his side bearing the two annexes.

Hakk? Bey received them standing, and he took the folder with both hands.

The memorandum ran to eight pages, and it opened with the cost of the first year, which was three thousand and one hundred liras, to be borne by the guilds and by one tenth of the fines.

Hakk? Bey read the first page and then the second and nodded as he read, and at the end he looked up.

"The Minister will ask what the House seeks, and I shall tell him that the House has written nothing for itself," he said. "I confess that I looked for the clause, Ayaan Efendi, and I could not find it."

"There was a clause, Hakk? Bey, and it was struck on the night before the memorandum was finished," said Ayaan. "I would sooner tell you so than let you find it in a draft."

Hakk? Bey was silent for a moment and then he laughed shortly.

"I will propose one change, that a state inspector be permitted to attend the tests in each town," he said. "He will not fine and he will not hold the book, but he will write a report."

"The House has no objection to a witness who writes a report, if the guild’s witness may read it," said Ayaan.

"It shall be so written," said Hakk? Bey.

VII

Constantinople, Sirkeci — 20 March 1916

R?za Bey of the Finance Inspectorate sat at the end of the table in the Ministry’s committee room, with a ledger open before him and a pen in his hand.

He was a thin man with a dry voice, and he had inspected the House’s books on three occasions without finding any fault.

"I do not oppose the code, for the figures are sound," he said. "I ask only what becomes of the fines in a town where the guild is poor or the witness dishonest."

"The fine book is open to the inspector and to any member of the guild, and each entry carries the number of the weight and the name of the shop," said Zeynep, who had been invited to answer. "The tenth that goes to the treasury is written beside it."

"And if the witness keeps a second book?"

"Then the stamped weights will not match the fines recorded, and a student of the Darülfünun who returns in the autumn will find the difference in an hour." She laid a sample page upon the table. "A false book is easier to find than a false weight, R?za Bey, for it must lie about every entry at once."

R?za Bey examined the sample page and permitted himself a thin smile.

"I should like the clause on the open book to be written into the circular," he said. "It would give my Inspectorate a reason to support the code."

"Then it shall be written as the second article, and the House will draft it tonight," said Zeynep.

VIII

Constantinople, Emin?nü — 12 April 1916

The circular to the provincial governors was signed by the Minister on the tenth of April and copied to forty towns before the week’s end.

Server Bey brought the first copy to the house himself, wrapped in a clean cloth, and laid it upon the study table.

"It carries your articles in the order that you wrote them, with the open book as the second and the state inspector’s report as the ninth," he said. "The Ministry has added only the date and the seal."

"The Minister read it three times in my presence, and he asked me one question," said Server Bey. "He asked whether the House would be offended that its name was omitted."

"The House is not offended," said Ayaan. "It would be offended only if the towns did not keep the code."

Ayaan read the circular slowly, and Zeynep read it beside him.

"There is no mention of the House," she said at last.

"There is none, Han?m, and I think it is the reason that the Minister signed it," said Server Bey. "The deputies have asked me three times who profits, and I have answered three times that no one does."

When Server Bey had gone, Cevdet came in from the garden with his hat in his hand and read the circular standing.

"It is the first proposal of the House to the state, and it carries no seal but the Minister’s," he said. "Allah grant that the next is as clean."

Ayaan opened the grey visitors’ book and wrote the date and the matter, and Zeynep signed beneath him.

Then he took the small notebook from his pocket and wrote a line beneath the one of January.

The state may borrow a rule, but it must never be asked to borrow a name.