“Which is wonderful,” she said. “It’s sentimental, but very uncomfortable. Both Monsieur Julien and my boss say that it never gets easier, no matter how much you practice.”
Fanis looked up at the ceiling corner onto which Selin’s shadow was projected by the candlelight. He took a sip of wine, savoring its hints of honey, orange, and vanilla. “During my first years of cantoring,” he said, “I found that the most beautiful hymns really strained my voice. But with time, I began to feel the sound pass through me, like it didn’t even come from me. I was just a vessel, a channel. Perhaps that might happen with you as well.”
Selin looked into his eyes and smiled with admiration. “It’s so good to talk to someone who understands.”
Just then the windows across the street illuminated, the television clicked, and the refrigerator resumed its humming. Fanis reached for the light switch, but Selin said, “Leave it off. It’s nice like this.”
Fanis crossed the room and took a CD from the case, but in the dim light he couldn’t tell what it was. He turned on the player, inserted the CD, and tried to think of something banal to say: “I forgot to serve the pastırma and pickles! Let me go get them.”
“Just sit,” said Selin. “We don’t need anything else.”
Fanis returned to the table. The first piano notes of “The Delicate Rose Of My Thought,” a classical Turkish love song, sounded through the chilly September evening. The strings joined the piano, and Selin began singing along with Sema Moritz about the nightingale of her heart.
“I’m enchanted,” said Fanis, when it had finished.
“It’s always been one of my favorites. But my voice is nothing in comparison with yours.”
“Don’t be silly. You sing very nicely.”
“What we really need is a voice and violin duet,” she said. And then, as if she had remembered something, she took out her J.S. Phillips violin and played the first notes of a piece that Fanis recognized instantly: Özdemir Erdoğan’s “Teacher Love,” a bittersweet duet between a young violinist and her much older instructor. Fanis dutifully sang his part about counting the days until their lessons. Then, on a sudden impulse, he replaced the twenty years of the original lyrics with the number of his and Selin’s gap: thirty-three.
Selin’s eyes darted from her violin to his face as soon as he said it. She had definitely noticed. As soon as the song was over, he turned on the lights and said, “I’ll just do the dishes before I head home.”
Selin replaced her violin in its case, took a liqueur set from a cabinet beside the black leather sofa, and said, “Leave the dishes. Let’s have some of Mom’s strawberrybrew.”
The friendship experiment was in jeopardy. If they went on like this, he would undoubtedly make a move, Orhan or no Orhan. So he said, “Another time, dear. I’ve got to get up early for . . . for . . . a doctor’s appointment.”
He hastily kissed Selin goodbye and tiptoed down the stairs. He had hoped to slip out of the building discreetly, but he met Madame Duygu, Selin’s landlady, on the raised ground-floor landing.
“Mr. Fanis,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” he returned. “Especially at this hour.”
“The people under the garret complained about the artiste. She was playing loud music and, apparently, she has an animal. A tomcat that makes all sorts of noise. I specifically said I don’t allow pets.”
“I don’t know what they heard, Madame Duygu,” Fanis said, “but I can assure you that the lady has no cat.”
“And the sounds?”
“It must have been the seagulls.”
“The seagulls?”
“They don’t just squawk, my dear Madame Duygu. They have a language all of their own. Sometimes it’s like a dog barking, sometimes a cat howling, and sometimes even like construction hammering or a monkey laughing. I study them in my spare time.”
“Are you all right, Mr. Fanis?” Duygu looked him over and sniffed the air. “You smell like . . . women’s perfume.”
“Please, Madame Duygu,” said Fanis, tickled that she might think him capable of seducing Selin. “I’m seventy-six.” He smiled, bowed, and skipped down the last few stairs.
20
The Test of the Package
Kosmas spent all his non-working hours that autumn at his office desk. Not only was he determined to find the Balkanik, but he also wanted to translate the recipes for use at the Lily and perhaps even publish them. For, Kosmas reasoned, even if Hamdi hadn’t recorded the Balkanik, his other culinary treasures had to be preserved for posterity.
Finally, on a cold night in early January—when Kosmas was about three-quarters through the last volume—he came upon something that resembled the famed pastry. The handwriting was minuscule but clear, running right to left in boxy little figures, but the page was not in good shape. There was a brown stain in the lower right-hand corner. The ingredient measurements had been hastily crossed out and annotated more than once, and wormholes pierced the assembly directions. Kosmas stuck his nose to the brown stain and inhaled: the mold overlay was strong, but he was sure that beneath it he smelled chocolate. And then he saw a scribble in the margin: Balkanik. Kosmas felt the sudden joy of discovery, the sensation that everything would fall into place.
He rubbed his stinging eyes, stuck a marker between the pages, returned the book to the safe, and walked home, hardly feeling the chill. It was three days before he was to leave for Miami: just enough time to transform the recipe into something functional so that he could continue his experiments in Daphne’s kitchen.
He opened the apartment door and found his mother seated in her favorite armchair. An unopened package rested in her lap. She was unusually calm. That worried Kosmas.
“I went to the bank today,” said Rea.
The previous evening, during a commercial break in Magnificent Century, Kosmas had announced his intention to propose to Daphne. Rea
