Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  Priscilla rustled, squirming in the backseat. “But I already said—”

  “Your maid doesn’t know anything about him,” Paul said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Hawkers come through the neighborhood all the time. Doesn’t mean that our maids know them just because they talk to them.”

  Anna sighed with frustration. “There must be a way to find out who that man was.”

  “They don’t carry identification information on them like we do.”

  They turned off Atatürk Boulevard, and the green Buick was the only car motoring along these side streets. Locust trees graced this residential area of Kavaklidere, a respite of shade and quiet. Sprawling houses, low-rise apartment buildings, and cement foundations of new construction rolled across these gentle hills south of downtown. Vacant lots honeycombed through the neighborhood.

  Anna’d had enough. “That man was some woman’s son,” she said, steeling her voice, “and maybe another woman’s husband. Some child’s father. They’re grieving for him right now. Wherever they are.”

  “Ulus, no doubt.”

  “Ulus? What’s that?”

  “The old city, where most of the poor live. It’s back there behind us, all the way across town from our neighborhood. On that cone-shaped hill you’ve probably noticed.” Paul’s voice dropped to a lower register. “Stay away from there.”

  “But why? Is it a dangerous place?”

  “It’s not a place for ladies.”

  His curt manner suggested he would tell her no more, but Anna persisted. “Why not?” She intended to go there. She would need to arm herself with as much information as possible.

  Priscilla leaned forward again. “Blood runs in the streets.”

  Anna gasped. “Blood? Real blood? Surely not!”

  Paul scowled. “Now, young lady—”

  “But it’s true!” Priscilla said. “Why don’t you believe me? I’ve seen it. It’s sheep’s blood, Fededa says.”

  “Did she take you there to show it to you herself?”

  Priscilla sighed, letting her opinion of Anna’s intelligence show. “Nope. She takes me there because that’s where the market is, and besides, that’s where she lives.”

  “She shouldn’t take you along,” Paul said. “I’ll have Ikbol talk to her. Straighten her out.”

  “But it’s fun.”

  Anna asked, “Ikbol?”

  “Our maid,” said Paul. “She speaks English, thank God, unlike Fededa. I should’ve put my foot down when the gals found Fededa for Mitzi, but she’s temporary. Mitzi couldn’t wait until someone more suitable happened along.”

  “I like Fededa.” Priscilla’s voice whined.

  Paul scowled and turned the corner onto Yeşilyurt Sokak. The car coasted to a stop in front of the Burkhardts’ yellow stucco house, and Priscilla leapt out. Anna apologized for her niece’s behavior and thanked Paul for driving them home. When she stepped out and closed the door, the Buick pulled away from the curb, leaving her standing there alone, breathing the car’s fumes. The distant warble of a muezzin, calling the local faithful to prayer, echoed her doubt.

  Where to begin, she wondered, correcting her niece’s manners? She followed Priscilla past Henry’s car and across the flagstone driveway. Just as Priscilla bounded up the steps to the porch, ahead of Anna as always, the front door of their house swung open. Anna stopped cold in the middle of the driveway. An American woman with a wide, lipstick-painted smile emerged from the house as if she owned the place.

  Chapter Seven

  Meryem preferred sitting on her heels instead of the dusty ground. Waiting. That’s all she seemed to do. She spent a lifetime waiting for her brother, and she was sick of it. She was the one whose deals supported them in finer fashion, and she deserved respect.

  A twig snapped, and Meryem startled. “Umit?” she whispered.

  When he did not respond, she half-rose from her crouch into a stance that readied her to spring away from trouble. The sudden movement sent blood rushing to her head, and she glanced cautiously around herself. The vacant lot appeared empty, but who could tell who was hiding on his belly, slithering beneath the tassling heads of weeds?

  If it was the gunman, she did not smell his presence. She’d never smelled him at Anit Kabir, either. She took a wary step backwards.

  Nearby, one of the stalks waved in the air, and a turtle crept out of the brambles, aimed in the direction of the water. When it either heard or sensed Meryem and the grazing eşek, it stopped, withdrawing its tasty appendages into its shell. It sat still like a rock, hiding in full sight. As she was doing.

  She let out a long sigh, plucked one of the weeds, and sank back onto her haunches. She bit off the head and sucked sweet nectar from the stem as she contemplated her brother.

  This wasn’t the first time Umit had changed his plans without bothering to tell her. The scent of a possibly more lucrative deal sometimes made him veer off their original plans, dress in the western suit their patron had handed down to him, and send him someplace where only Allah knew, without thinking. Such lack of careful thought would get him in trouble one day, she feared. Perhaps the day had come today, if the gunman’s interference and the sirens she’d heard were any indication.

  Bah! Umit deserved to get locked up by the police. What annoyed Meryem more than worry for her brother, for he could take care of himself, was the prospect of lost income without his half of their partnership. That wouldn’t stop her from their scheme. She would find another way.

  The melodic chant of the local muezzin drifted to her like the buzz of a meandering insect. It was the signal that her chances for income this afternoon were waning along with the dipping sun. She sighed again. At least the gun was well hidden for now. It would remain hidden until she negotiated with the buyer at the top of the hill. The afternoon wasn’t entirely wasted.

  She squinted once more at the turtle, who still had not emerged from its shell, and tiptoed to the eşek. The animal shook its head as she tugged on the harness, pulling it away from the grasses.

  “He thinks he’s found something better than you and me,” she said. “We will show him. We will find our own fortune.” She nudged the eşek along the path, in the direction of Yeşilyurt Sokak and the floating song of the muezzin.

  “Shine your pots,” Meryem sang once they plodded up the smoothly paved street.

  The animal balked, clinking the copper pots tied to its sides. Either it was reluctant to climb this small hill or reluctant to go back to work. She didn’t blame it, but there were mouths to feed at home and still a few hours of daylight left in which to earn some lira.

  The apartment building on her left, straddled by two empty lots, was so new she could still smell its drying cement. No one emerged from the blocky residence. No one scurried down its marble front steps, as someone usually did at the sound of her approach. Only three families—foreigners, all of them—lived in it.

  On her right was a row of houses, where wealthy Turks and foreigners lived side by side. Today, their gates remained tightly shut to her calls. When she and Umit did this round together once or twice per week, someone along this street always found a pot in need of repair. Or at least a cleaning. The hired servants were kept too busy to tend to such menial tasks themselves but were in danger of losing their jobs if they allowed the kitchen utensils to fall into disrepair.

  Served them right to live in such fine palaces!

  Was it because Umit was not with her that they were not answering her call today? If she could not gain entrance to their kitchens, she did not know how to offer her other services. Someone among this wealth always entertained. Would always need her. The question was how to find them. She’d danced only the week before, one street over, but potential clients had no way of contacting her. Telephones were for the wealthy, not for her and Umit. She was solicited only by word of mouth through the servants.

  Suddenly the eşek broke into a trot and headed for the empty lot uphill from
the apartment building. “Here, you lazy animal,” she muttered under her breath. It never wanted to work for her. Only Umit could make the donkey cooperate.

  She pulled on its harness, but it was no use. So she let it lead the way, as if she’d planned all along for this diversion. She could take the extra time to readjust its straps. Unlike the open field at the bottom of the hill where they’d waited for Umit, this piece of empty land wedged between the low apartment building on the downhill side and a sprawling yellow house on the uphill side. No stream flowed through here, and once the eşek discovered the lack of water, it wouldn’t remain here long. So Meryem thought.

  * * * * *

  Anna tried to remember the name of the woman standing in the front door of Mitzi’s house, waving at Paul’s departing car. A cigarette angled between her fingers, manicured red to match her lips. Anna had met so many of Mitzi’s friends during the whirlwind of introductions in the space of a few days before her sister left town. This woman, she recognized, was the Burkhardts’ closest American neighbor, living on the next street over. Their backyards touched.

  “Miss Cora!” Priscilla shouted. She ran to the woman, flung her arms around her, and nestled against her full skirt.

  Anna felt a twinge of jealousy flick through her.

  “There, there, dear,” Cora said, patting her.

  “They shot him! That man who comes here for Fededa.” Priscilla turned loose and dug into a pocket of her own skirt. “Look what he gave me.” She pulled out a chain—some sort of necklace—and handed it over.

  Dread pulsed through Anna. With her anxiety about the dead man and questions about Rainer and the letter, she’d forgotten about the way her niece had hidden her hand behind her back at the tomb. The dead man had given Priscilla the necklace, and then she’d said hayir. No.

  Why hadn’t she told anyone about this before now? No one would let me, Priscilla had said in the taxi with Hayati, in reference to recognizing the man in Henry’s suit.

  Priscilla had kept the trinket hidden from her all this time—and from the police. Because she shared Paul Wingate’s suspicions of that detective? Shuddering, Anna hurried up the steps to the front porch.

  “Dear, you know not to take things from strangers,” Cora said, holding the chain up, dangling a silver dollar-sized medallion in the sunlight. “Why...my goodness gracious. Is this a diamond?”

  Anna froze to her spot. Sucked in her breath. It looked familiar, like something Rainer had had. She hadn’t thought of his medallion in years.

  “Who gave this to you, dear?” Cora asked.

  “The gypsy at Atatürk’s Tomb. What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know, but Uncle Paul will find out. Now, go dry your eyes and change out of your nice dress and into your play clothes. You want to play with Tommy, don’t you? He’s waiting for you in the backyard.”

  This woman—Cora—ignored the shock Priscilla had experienced, as if it never happened. Worst of all, she ignored it at this crucial moment, when Priscilla seemed ready to open up about the tragic events of today.

  He was a gypsy, and Fededa knew him.

  Anna reached for Priscilla, but her niece darted away, disappearing into the airy interior of the house.

  “My dear,” Cora said, turning to Anna. She closed her fingers around the medallion and lowered her arm to her side. Her gaze swept Anna up and down, taking in the unfurled strands of hair that had come loose from her bun, and the rumpled cotton of her flowered sundress. Anna could feel the bodice sticking to her with sweat stains and streaks of dirt.

  “You look like you could use a martini,” Cora said. “Do come inside.”

  “I’ll take that now, thank you.” Anna held out her hand.

  Cora pocketed the medallion. “First, the martini.” Turning sharply, she marched inside, chattering all the way. “Paul phoned me up and said you were in a bit of a jam with the police and needed our help. So here I am.”

  Anna felt temporarily blinded as she stepped out of the glaring light of the late afternoon and into the shady interior of her sister’s house, cooled with cement floors and thick carpets. Gauzy curtains fluttered at the windows, and eucalyptus leaves scented the breeze. In the central room of the house, Fededa knelt on a prayer rug, with her kerchiefed forehead resting on one end of the rug. Cora stepped around her, as if the maid were nothing more than a fixture in the room, and sailed on, chattering all the way about the awful heat and dust.

  Anna hesitated, feeling torn between her desire to respect Fededa and the questions that boiled through her mind. The questions could wait until after her prayers. Giving the maid a wide berth, she followed the trail of Cora’s cigarette smoke through French doors, and out to a covered verandah overlooking the backyard. Cora headed to a makeshift bar set up on a card table. She laid her cigarette among several stubs in a brass tray the size of her palm, then clinked bottles against each other.

  “We all help each other out here,” Cora said. “Think of us as your family, dear. We have to rely on each other, you know, in this godforsaken place. I guess you’ll have to get used to that from now on, if you’re to stay.”

  Anna didn’t think Turkey was godforsaken. It was a rich place, rich with layers upon layers of history, unlike at home. The American west was scarcely touched by its history in comparison to this ancient land.

  Cora rattled ice into a shaker and mixed the drinks. “Because in the States, you don’t have to rely on community as much as you have to here.” She offered Anna a long-stemmed glass.

  “No, thank you,” Anna said.

  Cora laughed, a brassy sound that reverberated with annoying prickles along Anna’s spine. “Oh, go on, try it. Mitzi warned me you might be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Prim and proper. Comes from being a schoolteacher, and a single gal no less, I suppose.” Cora sank gracefully into a wicker chair, sipped the drink Anna had rejected, then looked up. She winked, as if they were conspirators. “You’ve probably been used to being on your own for a lo-o-o-ong time, haven’t you?”

  Anna pinched her mouth shut and set down her straw purse.

  “I suppose it’s for the best,” Cora continued, “since everyone knows your kind can’t hold your liquor. Oh, go on. Don’t look so shocked. Mitzi told me all about it, how you two are really half-sisters with different fathers. Yours was some sort of indian, isn’t that right?”

  Refusing to let Cora think she’d successfully needled her, Anna crossed the verandah to put distance between them. A little boy, about Priscilla’s age, dangled by one arm from a mulberry tree in the yard. Her niece, still wearing her flouncy skirt and petticoat, stood below and eyed the trunk, eager to climb up after her friend.

  Movement from next door pulled Anna’s attention away from the children. A man, dressed in a khaki uniform similar to Oscar’s, patrolled the neighbor’s garden instead of tending to prayers as faithful Moslems should right now. He hovered close to his side of their shared wire fence, not doing anything special, except appearing to listen to their conversation. Did he know English? Mitzi had warned her not to bother the people in that house. A Turkish general lived there.

  Anna composed herself enough to face Cora. She returned to her side, by the wicker chair, and lowered her voice. “All right, let me see it now.”

  “See what, dear?”

  She knew very well, Anna thought. Why was this woman being so coy? “The necklace Priscilla gave you.”

  “It’s not important.” With a fresh cigarette fixed to her fingers, Cora waved her wrist, casting away a serpentine ribbon of smoke. “Paul will take care of it.”

  Anna held out her hand, palm up. “I wouldn’t think of troubling him. It’s my responsibility to follow up on this matter.”

  Cora shrugged, propped the cigarette in an ash tray, and dug into a pocket of her gathered skirt. She produced the silver chain and medallion and dropped them into Anna’s open palm.

  Anna’s little display of defiance crumbled. Her
heart skipped a beat as she recognized Rainer’s Saint Christopher’s medal.

  Chapter Eight

  The animal’s body heat hit Meryem in the face as she bent over its harness where its beads had hung, up until its frenzy at Anit Kabir. The sounds of tinkling glass along with a woman’s high-pitched voice distracted Meryem from her work, and she glanced up to listen better. It always paid to remain alert.

  She sucked in her breath. A dress she recognized, splattered with pink flowers the size of melons, swirled about the backyard of the yellow house uphill. The foreign gadje from the pasha’s tomb today! Quickly, Meryem bent back over the donkey, so the pair of foreigners wouldn’t realize she was listening.

  Americans. That much she could make out from their English.

  She didn’t speak English well, but she had a natural ability to imitate bits and pieces of any language. This was a useful skill, especially now that Ankara was inundated with foreigners—mostly Americans—these days. She strained to listen, but all she could hear were a few words and all the cackles. Once, she caught the word “polis.” The foreign woman from the tomb had come here, to this Kavaklidere hillside, same as Meryem. Their paths of destiny must intertwine.

  Meryem slipped around to the downhill side of the donkey, so that she could pretend to work on its harness while watching the American women at the same time. The woman from the tomb held something up, which sparkled as it caught a ray of light from the sun sinking behind Meryem.

  It sparkled like...treasure.

  Like their treasure. Hers and Umit’s.

  Was that what Umit’s “quick deal” had been about?

  The American woman had been there, at the tomb. So had Umit. This gadje must be part of the “quick deal” that had involved Umit. He’d given away their treasure to her. And for what?

  Why hadn’t her brother caught up to her by now?

  A shudder rippled through Meryem, and her hands shook as she busied them with the animal’s load. Her brother had proven himself clever again and again, she reminded herself. He’d evaded Nazis and Russians, dangers far worse than any Turk. He could take care of himself once more. She must believe that. There was no other possibility.