before his adventure in the archive had sent him pell-mell out of Istanbul, and he was real to me, too-not only Rossi as I knew him but also the young Rossi of his letters.
“Helen tapped my arm as we walked and nodded in the direction of a couple of old men at a little wooden table tucked away near a booth. ‘Look-there’s your theory of leisure in person,’ she said. ‘It’s nine in the morning and they are already playing chess. It is strange that they are not playingtabla -that is the favorite game, in this part of the world. But I believe this is chess, instead.’ Sure enough, the two men were just setting up their pieces on a worn-looking wooden board. Black was arrayed against ivory, knights and rooks guarded their lieges, pawns faced one another in battle formation-the same arrangement of war the world over, I mused, stopping to watch. ‘Do you know about chess?’ Helen asked.
“‘Of course,’ I said a little indignantly. ‘I used to play it with my father.’
“‘Ah.’ The sound was acerbic, and I remembered too late that she had had no such childhood lessons, and that she played her own kind of chess with her father-with her image of him, in any case. But she seemed to be caught up in historical reflections. ‘It’s not Western, you know-it’s an ancient game from India -shahmatin Persian.Checkmate, I think you say in English.Shah is the word forking. A battle of kings.’
“I watched the two men beginning their game, their gnarled fingers selecting the first warriors. Jokes flashed between them-probably they were old friends. I could have stood there all day, watching, but Helen moved restlessly away, and I followed her. As we went by, the men seemed to notice us for the first time, glancing up quizzically for a moment. We must look like foreigners, I realized, although Helen’s face blended beautifully with the countenances around us. I wondered how long their game would take-all morning, maybe-and which of them would win this time.
“The booth near them was just opening up. It was really a shed, wedged under a venerable fig tree at the edge of the bazaar. A young man in a white shirt and dark trousers was pulling vigorously at the stall’s doors and curtains, setting up tables outside and laying out his wares-books. Books stood in stacks on the wooden counters, tumbled out of crates on the floor, and lined the shelves inside.
“I went forward eagerly, and the young owner nodded a greeting and smiled, as if he recognized a bibliophile whatever his national cut. Helen followed more slowly, and we stood turning through volumes in perhaps a dozen languages. Many of them were in Arabic, or in the modern Turkish language; some were in Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, others in English, French, German, Italian. I found a Hebrew tome and a whole shelf of Latin classics. Most were cheaply printed and shoddily bound, their cloth covers already shabby with handling. There were new paperbacks with lurid scenes on the covers, and a few volumes that looked very old, especially some of the works in Arabic. ‘The Byzantines loved books, too,’ Helen murmured, leafing through what looked like a set of German poetry. ‘Perhaps they bought books on this very spot.’
“The young man had finished his preparations for the day, and he came over to greet us. ‘Speak German? English?’
“‘English,’ I said quickly, since Helen did not answer.
“‘I have books in English,’ he told me with a pleasant smile. ‘No problem.’ His face was thin and expressive, with large greenish eyes and a long nose. ‘Also newspaper from London, New York.’ I thanked him and asked if he carried old books. ‘Yes, very old.’ He handed me a nineteenth- century edition ofMuch Ado About Nothing -cheap looking, bound in worn cloth. I wondered what library this had drifted from and how it had made its journey-from bourgeois Manchester, say-to this crossroads of the ancient world. I flipped through the pages, to be polite, and handed it back. ‘Not enough old?’ he asked, smiling.
“Helen had been peering over my shoulder, and now she looked pointedly at her watch. We hadn’t even reached Hagia Sophia, after all. ‘Yes, we’ve got to be going,’ I said.
“The young bookseller gave us a courteous bow, volume in hand. I stared at him for a second, troubled by something that bordered on recognition, but he had turned away and was helping a new customer, an old man who could have been a triplet to the chess players. Helen nudged my elbow, and we left the shop and went more purposefully around the edge of the bazaar and back toward our pension.
“The little restaurant was empty when we entered, but a few minutes later Turgut appeared in the doorway, nodding and smiling, and asked us how we had slept. He was wearing an olive wool suit this morning, despite the gathering heat, and seemed full of suppressed excitement. His curly dark hair was slicked back, his shoes shone with polish, and he moved quickly to usher us out of the restaurant. I noticed again that he was a person of great energy, and I felt relief at having such a guide. Excitement was rising in me, too. Rossi’s papers rested securely in my briefcase, and perhaps the next few hours would bring me a step closer to his whereabouts. Soon, at least, I might be able to compare his copies of the documents with the originals he had examined so many years before.
“As we followed Turgut through the streets, he explained to us that Sultan Mehmed’s archive was not housed in the main building of the National Library, although it was still under state protection. It was now in a library annex that had once been amendrese, a traditional Islamic school. Ataturk had closed these schools in his secularization of the country, and this one currently contained the National Library’s rare and antique books on the history of the Empire. We would find Sultan Mehmed’s collection among others from the centuries of Ottoman expansion.
“The annex to the library proved to be an exquisite little building. We entered it from the street through brass-studded wooden doors. The windows were covered with a tracery of marble; sunlight filtered through them in fine geometric shapes, decorating the floor of the dim entryway with fallen stars and octagons. Turgut showed us where to sign the register, which lay on a counter at the entrance (Helen put down an illegible scrawl, I noticed), and signed it himself with a flourish.
“Then we proceeded into the collection’s one room, a large, hushed space under a dome set with green-and-white mosaic. Polished tables ran the length of it, and three or four researchers already sat working there. The walls were lined not only with books but also with wooden drawers and boxes, and delicate brass lamp shades fitted with electric lighting hung from the ceiling. The librarian, a slender man of fifty with a string of prayer beads on his wrist, left his work and came over to shake both of Turgut’s hands in his. They spoke for a minute-on Turgut’s side of the conversation I caught the name of our university at home-and then the librarian addressed us in Turkish, smiling and bowing. ‘This is Mr. Erozan. He welcomes you to the collection,’ Turgut told us with a look of satisfaction. ‘He would like to be of assassination to you.’ I recoiled, in spite of myself, and Helen smirked. ‘He will set forth for you immediately Sultan Mehmed’s documents from the Order of the Dragon. But first, we must sit in comfort here and wait for him.’
“We settled at one of the tables, carefully distant from the few other researchers. They eyed us with transitory curiosity and then returned to their work. After a moment, Mr. Erozan came back carrying a large wooden box with a lock on the front and Arabic lettering carved into the top. ‘What does that say?’ I asked the professor.
“‘Ah.’ He touched the top of the box with his fingertips. ‘It says, ”Here is evil“-hmm-”here is evil contained-housed. Lock it with the keys of holy Qur’an.“’ My heart made a jump; the phrases were strikingly similar to what Rossi had reported reading in the margins of the mysterious map and had spoken aloud in the old archives where it had once been stored. He’d made no mention of this box in his letters, but perhaps he’d never seen it, if a librarian had brought him just the documents. Or perhaps they had been placed in the box sometime after Rossi’s sojourn here.
“‘How old is the box itself?’ I asked Turgut.
“He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, and neither does my friend here. Because it is of wood, I do not think it is very likely to be as old as the time of Mehmed. My friend told me once’-he beamed in Mr. Erozan’s direction, and the man beamed back without comprehension-‘that these documents were put in the box in 1930, to keep them safe. He knows that because he discussed it with the previous librarian. He is most meticulous, my friend.’
“In 1930! Helen and I looked at each other. Probably by the time Rossi had penned his letters-December 1930-to whoever might later receive them, the documents he had examined had already been put into this box for safekeeping. An ordinary wooden receptacle might have kept out mice and damp, but what had prompted the librarian of that era to lock the documents of the Order of the Dragon inside a
