Istanbul Passage

see? Even Leon. Serious. I had such hopes.”

Kay nodded, smiling. “But not as bad as they are in Ankara. Not yet,” she said to Leon.

He glanced back. Something different in her voice, private. Could anyone else hear it?

“No,” Lily was saying. “So why now at the consulate?” She poked his shoulder gently. “What does it mean?”

“Just filling in.”

“Yes? They say you’re a detective now.”

“Who says?”

“On dit,” Lily said, brushing this a way. “And have you found him yet? The killer?”

“No.”

“No suspects?”

“Your new guest is everybody’s favorite,” he said, motioning toward the dining room. “At the consulate anyway.”

“But how could it be? He wasn’t even in Istanbul that night.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, people say things. They think I don’t hear. You know, at Yildiz-you learned to listen. Every sound. A long time ago, but it’s a lesson you don’t forget.”

“What else are they saying?”

Lily waved her hand. “Gossip. That’s why I ask you. But you don’t tell me. So come. Before people talk. I don’t care for myself. Refik can’t hear anymore. But Mrs. Bishop-”

“Refik was your husband?” Kay said.

“Yes. And jealous too. Ouf. I think it amused him. Some men are like that. They think every man is-”

“Every man probably was,” Leon said.

“But was I interested in them? Never. Of course he knew that. Maybe he thought it flattered me. To be jealous.”

“You were in love with him?” Kay said.

“What a question,” Lily said, suddenly tentative, surprised at this. “Certainly. But love-it’s not always so reliable, you know? It changes. But with us there was also a debt. I owed him everything, my life. How could there be anyone else? He rescued me.”

“Literally?”

“Oh, a long story. Not for a party. Leon, you must know this, how Refik found me. After the harem.”

“Only that he did.”

“Tell me,” Kay said. “Do you mind?”

Leon glanced at her, eager, wanting to know. A kiss he hadn’t expected. He looked over her shoulder, unsettled. In the same garden. But not the same, just a few pines. The other trees pollarded, cut back for the winter, the laburnum and chestnuts only in his head, in the past.

“Mind?” Lily was saying, delighted to have an audience. “Well, everybody wants to know about the harem. What was it like? Something romantic. But it wasn’t like that. The house in Yildiz, nothing to do. Games, with the other girls. What did we learn? How to act. How to dress. And what good was that when it was over? People don’t ask that, what happened after. Nobody thought. After they sent Abdul Hamid to Salonica, there we were and no one knew what to do with us. Hundreds of girls, some children. So they took us to Topkapi. It was the first time I’d ever been there. So damp. At least Yildiz had been warm. And then they sent messengers to all the villages where we’d been born-come and get your daughters, take them home. And some did. Farmers, and their daughters are dressed like-well, you can imagine the kind of clothes you wore for the sultan, beautiful, and now they’re going back to the farm. Useless for work. Some didn’t want to go. What would happen? Make yogurt, be married off to some ox. So they’d cry, but of course they had to go. The fathers would sell their jewelry, and that’s the last they’d see of Istanbul. Now the fields. If they were still virgin, maybe a marriage in the town, somebody who liked good manners. If not, not. Any marriage that could be arranged. The jewelry would make a bride price. And that was the end of the harem for them.”

She stopped, catching herself. “I don’t know, maybe some of the girls were happy to see their families again. There must have been some, yes? But I didn’t see it. Just the crying. In carts sometimes, they drove away in carts. In Istanbul. Behind veils, of course, but you could tell they were crying.

“And these, you know, were the lucky ones. Someone came for them. The rest of us, we’d think, why doesn’t my family come? Maybe they moved from the village. Maybe they never heard the messengers. Maybe this, maybe that. But what you thought was, they don’t want me. And now what? We couldn’t stay at Topkapi forever. The government didn’t want to keep us, the expense. What happens to a girl in Istanbul who knows-what? how to make herself attractive? Galata, one of those houses, what else? If you were a virgin, they could sell your first night. Money to them. After that, you were just in the house, one of the-well, you know what that was. That’s what I thought would happen to me. They’d lock me up in one of those houses until they could sell my first night. And then the rest. Who knows what it’s really like? Just things you hear. Maybe it’s worse. And then I was rescued.”

She looked up at Kay. “Not Refik, not yet. The first rescue was Nevber, one of the girls. Her parents had died but they had friends who came for her, to adopt her, and she said, please, would they take me too. I don’t think they wanted to, one daughter was all they could afford, but Nevber said they should take me as a servant. I could do housework, whatever they liked. A servant, but I wouldn’t be put out in the streets, and you know they were all right. A lot of work, but a place to live. This was in Izmir. Jews, so I always felt a debt to that,” she said to Leon. “That’s why I helped Anna, when she needed money for the boats. And when Nevber married and left the house, they kept me. Not a daughter, not a servant, something in between. But there wasn’t money to arrange a marriage. So what future? And then, Refik. Some business and he comes to the house and he sees me. A Cypriot. What happens between people? Do we know? I don’t.”

“No,” Kay said. “It just happens.”

Leon looked at her, mouth slightly open, deep in the story. Do something for me. Reaching up to him.

“So it happens for him,” Lily said. “Why, I don’t know. And a few days later, he’s back, and then back again and they tell me he wants to marry me. No bride price, no family, never mind. Not some arrangement, a girl in a room- they would never have agreed to that. Marriage. So my first night was with my husband, not some house in Galata.” She moved her hand toward Kay. “Love? Not then. But the debt began. And everything that happened after.” She extended her arm to the yali. “The life we had. You know in the harem, you want to be gozde, one who’s noticed. Abdul Hamid never did, I was too young. But Refik did. I was gozde to him. I sometimes think what would have happened if they’d kept the harem. Become a kadive to Abdul Hamid? An old, crazy man. Maybe now I’d even be valide.” She shook her head. “But never have this life. Never see Paris, anywhere. So it was lucky for me, Refik. Better than the sultan.”

“Gozde,” Kay said, trying to pronounce it, still in the story.

“Yes. ‘In the eye.’ And it was true, I was. So later, when there were other women, I’d think, well, they’re- women. But I’m the one in his eye.”

“You didn’t mind if-” Kay began.

“Yes, at first it’s terrible. You think it’s the end of the world. But you know, the world doesn’t end. It just becomes something else. I remember when the Ottomans finally left-the last ones, the household, children, grandchildren-I went to Sirkeci to see it. I knew some of them from the old days, so I was curious. They put them on the Orient Express-one way-and this woman at the station, maybe a servant, tears and wailing. It’s the end of the world. And this is ’twenty-four when Kemal Pasha is making a new Turkey. So, whose end? Well, listen to me. Who talks like this? Old women.” She put her hand on Leon’s upper arm, patting it. “Don’t make trouble with my Russian. You know everyone comes to my house.”

“When did he die? Your husband,” Kay said.

“Before the war. A few months after Kemal. People said it broke his heart. They were so close.”

“Kemal-”

“Ataturk,” Leon said.

“Another lion,” Lily said, without irony. “Now come. Have something to eat. Hacer has been cooking all day. Ah,