both; then she began asking questions by the dozen; not about Pierre Loti, the Turkophile Frenchman, but about the Seraglio.
I did my best to explain. To most people, the word “palace” means a single very big building planned to house a monarch. Of course, there are usually a few smaller buildings around it, but the big building is The Palace. Although the word “Seraglio” really means “palace,” it isn’t at all like one. It is an oval-shaped walled area over two miles in circumference, standing on top of the hill above Seraglio Point at the entrance to the Bosphorus; and it is a city within a city. Originally, or at least from the time of Suleiman the Magnificent until the mid-nineteenth century, the whole central government, ministers and high civil servants as well as the Sultan of the time, lived and worked in it. There were household troops and a cadet school as well as the Sultan’s harem inside the walls. The population was generally over five thousand, and there was always new building going on. One reason for this was a custom of the Ottomans. When a new Sultan came to the throne, he naturally inherited all the wealth and property accumulated by his father; but he could not take the personalized property for his own personal use without losing face. Consequently, all the old regalia had to be stored away and new pieces made, a new summer palace had to be built and, of course, new private apartments inside the Seraglio, and a new mosque. As I say, this went on well into the nineteenth century. So the Seraglio today is a vast rabbit warren of reception rooms, private apartments, pavilions, mosques, libraries, gateways, armories, barracks, and so on, interspersed by a few open courtyards and gardens. There are no big buildings in the “palace” sense. The two biggest single structures happen to be the kitchens and the stables.
Although the guidebooks try to explain all this, most tourists don’t seem to understand it. They think “Seraglio” means “harem” anyway and all they are interested in apart from that is the “Golden Road,” the passage that the chosen girls went along to get from the harem to the Sultan’s bed. The harem area isn’t open to the public as a matter of fact; but I always used to take the tourists I had through the Mustafa Pasha pavilion at the back and tell them that that was part of the harem. They never knew the difference, and it was something they could tell their friends.
Miss Lipp soon got the idea, though. I found that she knew something about Turkish history; for instance, who the Janissaries had been. For someone who, only an hour or so earlier, had been asking if the Seraglio was the old palace, that was a little surprising. At the time, I suppose, I was too busy trying to answer her other questions to pay much attention. I had shown her the guidebook plan and she was going through all the buildings marked on it.
“The White Eunuchs’ quarters along here, are they open?”
“Only these rooms near the Gate of Felicity in the middle.”
“The Baths of Selim the Second, can we see them?”
“That is part of the museum now. There is a collection of glass and silverware there, I think.”
“What about the Hall of the Pantry?”
“I think that building has the administration offices in it now.”
Some of the questions I couldn’t answer at all, even vaguely, but she still kept on. Finally, she broke off, swallowed her second raki at a gulp, and looked across at me.
“Are you hungry, Arthur?”
“Hungry? No, Miss Lipp, not particularly.”
“Why don’t we go to the palace right now then?”
“Certainly, if you wish.”
“Okay. You take care of the check here. We’ll settle later.”
I saw the eyes of one or two men sitting in the cafe follow her as she went back to the car, and I noticed them glancing at me as I paid for the drinks. Obviously they were wondering what the relationship was-father, uncle, or what? It was oddly embarrassing. The trouble was, of course, that I didn’t know what to make of Miss Lipp and couldn’t decide what sort of attitude to adopt towards her. To add to the confusion, a remark Harper had made at the Club in Athens, about Nicki’s legs being too short, kept coming into my mind. Miss Lipp’s legs were particularly long, and, for some reason, that was irritating as well as exciting; exciting because I couldn’t help wondering what difference long legs would make in bed; irritating because I knew damn well that I wasn’t going to be given the chance to find out.
I drove her to the Seraglio and parked in what used to be the Courtyard of the Janissaries, just outside the Ortakapi Gate by the executioner’s block. As it was so early, there were only two or three other cars besides the Lincoln. I was glad of that because I was able to get off my piece about the gate without being overheard by official guides with other parties. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to have my guide’s license asked for and challenged.
The Ortakapi Gate is a good introduction to the “feel” of the Seraglio. “It was here at this gate that the Sultans used to stand to watch the weekly executions. The Sultan stood just there. You see the block where the beheading was done. Now, see that little fountain built in the wall there? That was for the executioner to wash the blood off himself when he had finished. He was also the Chief Gardener. By the way, this was known as the Gate of Salvation. Rather ironic, don’t you think? Of course, only high palace dignitaries who had offended the Sultan were beheaded here. When princes of the royal house were executed-for instance, when a new Sultan had all his younger brothers killed off to prevent arguments about the succession-their blood could not be shed, so they were strangled with a silk cord. Women who had offended were treated in a different way. They were tied up in weighted sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. Shall we go inside now?”
Until Miss Lipp, I had never known it to fail.
She gave me a blank stare. “Is any of that true, Arthur?”
“Every word of it.” It is true, too.
“How do you know?”
“Those are historic facts, Miss Lipp.” I had another go. “In fact, one of the Sultans got bored with his whole harem and had them all dumped into the Bosphorus. There was a shipwreck off Seraglio Point soon after, and a diver was sent down. What he saw there almost scared him to death. There were all those weighted sacks standing in a row on the bottom and swaying to and fro with the current.”
“Which Sultan?”
Naturally, I thought it was safe to guess. “It was Murad the Second.”
“It was Sultan Ibrahim,” she said. “No offense, Arthur, but I think we’d better hire a guide.”
“Whatever you say, Miss Lipp.”
I tried to look as if I thought it a good idea, but I was really quite angry. If she had asked me right out whether I was a historical expert on the Seraglio, I would have told her, quite frankly, that I was not. It was the underhand way in which she had set out to trap me that I didn’t like.
We went through the gate, and I paid for our admissions and selected an English-speaking guide. He was solemn and pedantic, of course, and told her all the things I had already explained all over again; but she did not seem to mind. From the way she bombarded him with questions you would have thought she was going to write a book about the place. Of course, that flattered him. He had a grin like an ape.
Personally, I find the Seraglio rather depressing. In Greece, the old buildings, even when they are in ruins and nothing much has been done in the way of restoration, always seem to have a clean, washed look about them. The Seraglio is stained, greasy, and dilapidated. Even the trees and shrubs in the main courtyards are neglected, and the so-called Tulip Garden is nothing but a scrubby patch of dirt.
As far as Miss Lipp was concerned though, the place might have been Versailles. She went everywhere, through the kitchens, through the museum rooms, the exhibition of saddles, this kiosk, that pavilion, laughing at the guide’s standard jokes and scuffing her shoes on the broken paving stones. If I had known what was going on in her mind, of course, I would have felt differently; but as it was, I became bored. After a bit, I gave up following them everywhere and just took the short cuts.
I was looking forward to a sit-down by the Gate of the Fountain while they “did” the textiles exhibition, when she called me over.
“Arthur, how long will it take us to get to the airport from here?”
I was so surprised that I must have looked at her a bit blankly. “The airport?”
She put on a slight heaven-give-me-patience look. “Yes, Arthur, the airport. Where the planes arrive. How long from here?”
The guide, who hadn’t been asked, said: “Forty minutes, madame. ”
