Seven Houses

by Alev Lytle Croutier

  ACCLAIM FOR SEVEN HOUSES

  “Stately, elegant, full of mystery and color. The writing is beautiful. I could hardly contain myself at some of the resonances. I love the sensuousness of the language. Every flower has a scent. Every fruit I want to bite. I know there will be many people who will enjoy this book. It is a substantial gift.”

  —Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

  “Croutier richly evokes the domestic space inhabited by the Ipekci women and their female servants. . . . She conjures the languid ease with which they gather in the hamam and the rich detail of the kitchen.”

  —International Herald Tribune

  “Croutier’s shimmering prose integrates a heady potpourri of poetic imagery, elements of magic realism and finely honed characterizations. . . . A solid success.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “By lacing her historical tale with surreal coincidences, premonitions and the supernatural, she offers a refreshing break from the contemporary trend of realist storytelling.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A breathtaking saga of love, longing, passion, and death to remind us of the mysteriously transient nature of existence. . . . Croutier is the kind of ‘auteur’ that speaks to all senses. Her art history and filmmaking background brings visual storytelling to its ultimate. . . . On each page and between every line, magic is woven with the finesse of high-quality silk . . . a literary feast.”

  —Newsbridge (Los Angeles)

  “A remarkable piece of fiction. . . . Poetic writing, stark imagery, and well-drawn characters capture the reader immediately. The follies of families, the strength of individuals, and the political upheaval of a country are beautifully brought together by Croutier. . . . Seven Houses is a remarkable journey.”

  —The Islands Weekly

  “Croutier’s novel is lavish while being intimate, and is reminiscent yet frank. Spending time in these Seven Houses is both sensory overload and pleasant indulgence.”

  —The Cavalier Daily (Charlottesville, VA)

  “Seven Houses is a marvelous novel of tales within tales told in the voices of seven houses that witness the many members of one family through time and history. Rich with psychological insights that carry layers of allegorical meaning, and with a subtle, lush beauty, it is engrossing and delightful on many levels at once.”

  —Susan Griffin, author of The Book of the Courtesan

  “Spun like an intricate tapestry, Seven Houses brings us from the steamy harem bathhouses of the Ottoman era through the war-torn decades of Turkey’s emerging democracy, as four generations of fascinating women struggle out of their own complex past—like a silkworm frozen in amber—toward the uncertain future.”

  —Katherine Neville, author of The Eight

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  For Sadri and Yümniye,

  my parents

  I

  The Delicate State of Silk

  And one should know beforehand that there will be in this book no terrible adventures, no extraordinary hunts, no discoveries, no dangers; nothing but the fancy of a slow walk, at the pace of a rocking camel, in the infinite bliss of the pink desert.

  PIERRE LOTI, The Desert

  The House in Smyrna

  (1918–1952)

  A hundred secrets will be known

  When that unveiled face is shown.

  FARID UD-DIN ATTAR, The Conference of the Birds

  Once upon a time here in Smyrna, a city as ancient, as infamous as the Olympians, the gods had changed a king’s daughter into a myrrh tree for incest. The love child of the trespass, Adonis, was born from her split trunk. Adonis was so handsome that Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty herself, coveted him as a lover. Her only true love—really. Fruit of a tree.

  Since then, a deep, palpable humming pervades this town of rumors. Maybe even before; surely even before. All you have to do is listen; you can hear so much—the birth cry of St. Paul, the scratching of St. John’s quill as he labors over his Gospel. Through the fog, you can see Anthony and Cleopatra, lost in horrid ecstasy, floating on a golden barge. Or a vision of Mother Mary deep in meditation, mourning for her dead son. It all happened here. They all occupied this same land, along the same sea. The Aegean. The mirror of mirrors.

  On the Bay of Smyrna, the air always smells of rotten plankton and salt. Clusters of debris lap ashore, gathering into sculptures of melon skins, cardboard, and kelp. Across the Bay, one can imagine Homer gleefully watching Odysseus’ ship gliding across and composing the Odyssey. Four thousand years later, in retaliation, the defeated Greek army burns all memories, at least so they say—all in this lifetime. But the smell of ancient ashes never subsides. The embers from time immemorial still smolder beneath the Bay (some say, the lava of Hades’ breath), long before the great fire almost consumed all. Here, it’s unavoidable. To go back in time. Live past lives. Be other people. Some places store memory. This is one.

  I was built in Smyrna in 1890, the year of Esma’s birth. A slender, many-roomed Victorian dwelling of wormwood, snuggling against an unworldly, umbrageous rock—obsidian, rumored to have been lowered down from the sky, the rock that gave the district its name: Karatash, or Black Stone.

  My balcony and the windows are covered with trellised fenestration that conceal the harem apartments, where jasmine and pomegranate vines cling to the facade, and linden and horse chestnut provide shade from the intense Aegean sun reflecting off the most saline, the most turquoise water. A cayique perpetually bangs against a hollowed marble dock, remnant of an ancient Lydian water temple. (The outbuildings were built much later to house the servants and also served as kitchen and laundry rooms.) The stained glass dome of the hamam, vapored from the steam of the baths below, against the skyline stands like the silhouette of a forlorn Mughal villa. Different than the rest.

  Some believed that the myrrh tree in the garden was the actual Adonis tree. They believed it was sacred and left votives and humble offerings on the double altars of its fracture. Others took it to be an ordinary myrrh cracked by natural forces. Over the years, its persistent branches stretched into Esma’s room and, later Amber’s, becoming the center of mysterious incidents. Like the time a hand burst out holding an amber egg with a frozen moth inside; or when a triple lightning burned it to the ground, only to be reborn the following night.

  For the first twenty-eight years of my life, a Pasha lived here with his harem—three wives, servants, and various offspring. The Pasha himself stayed in the boathouse annex, conducting otherworldly business—an unscrupulous and selfish rich man concerned only with his vanities—cultivating the white opium poppy and belittling the unfortunate. After the exile of the Sultan, the Young Turks, declaring him guilty of unspeakable crimes, exiled him to the purgatorial ice lands of Kars where, they say, he committed even worse things. They say, old dust never settles. That’s another story.

  But the women in his harem, suddenly finding themselves with no sustenance and nowhere to go, and no resources to keep me, had to flee in a terrible hurry, abandoning their splendid clothes, fine china, and priceless furniture. It was at this juncture that Esma arrived, just at this instant of their imminent departure as if on a theatrical cue.

  A hazy winter afternoon. Shrouded and veiled in black, she arrived with a go-between, wal
king three steps behind her older brother Iskender, her identical sons—Cadri and Aladdin—clinging to her skirt. (You can always tell orphans.) And three paces behind followed her two maids, Gonca and Ayşe, heads down, furtive steps.

  Like an apparition, Esma shuffled from room to room, as if talking to the invisible faces on the walls, touching and smelling objects that caught her eye, chanting prayers. She opened the doors to every room cramped with dusty episodes, the basement resonating with the constant sound of dripping water from the hamam. Tip, tip, tip. How to fill the emptiness, revitalize the neglect. Yes.

  Out the back window of the third story, she saw the black rock, the cracked tree. Felt the tremor from the lapping of the waves against the stilts. Her eyes watered. She had come home. Love at first sight.

  “The house could be yours for nothing,” whispered the go-between, who followed her into the attic strewn with the indulgences of women from a distant era—balloon pants, satin slippers, gauzy veils. “Number One Wife desperate to get rid of it all. They have nowhere to go. They must leave the house by dawn.”

  Esma ignored her and returned to the harem where the women offered her coffee and confections. They watched intently as she removed her kid gloves, squeezed a sapphire ring the size of a hazelnut—a last vestige of her dwindling jewels—and slid it on the Number One Wife’s finger.

  It fit perfectly.

  “Payment for the house,” Esma told her.

  The older woman began to weep, tried kissing her hand in gratitude, which Esma would not allow. Esma put her arms around her until she stopped sobbing.

  From that moment, we were inseparable. Even after death.

  Each time she heard the story, “What happened to the harem ladies?” the child Amber would ask.

  “A sad story. Their eunuchs took them from village to village in distant lands of Europe and displayed them as curiosities. Sort of like dancing bears.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were nameless and had no other place to go. No one to claim them. They were stolen from their homes so long ago that no one remembered them anymore.”

  “I can’t allow you to live in a strange city all alone! In a big house like this! Who is to protect you? What will the people think?” her brother Iskender paced, exasperated. “Stop being so stubborn and come to the plantation. The boys must have other men around! A woman shouldn’t stray from her family.”

  “This is my home,” Esma was firm. “I must stay in Smyrna. Where my husband brought me as a bride. I have the girls to help me. We’ll find our way somehow. God is on our side.”

  “The girls” were the two Kurdish odalisques, the servants—Gonca and Ayşe they were called—gifts from Esma’s brother-in-law, the kind-hearted Mim Pasha. I heard their story repeated many times over and over again. How four little girls, sisters, lay half dead among the debris of a massacred village in the region of Mount Ararat. With admirable heroism, Mim Pasha had saved their lives and brought them back as gifts for his wife, Mihriban, and for Esma. Now they belonged to the family.

  “It breaks my heart to see you like this. But you’ve been stubborn since you were born. Remember, though, no one knows what fate brings. If you ever change your mind, you always have a place with me,” Iskender told Esma before returning to the silk plantation in Bursa. “Rain or shine. Don’t forget to remember.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Could they have known as he rode away? Could they have known how fate would soon pull them apart?

  The picture of the stern gentleman in the white turban, old enough to be her father, instead belonged to Esma’s husband, recently deceased. Forced to sell her finest jewelry in order to survive after his death, except a precious stone or two and a few yards of sumptuous crepe d’amour, crepe of love. Genuine silk. The finest of all for a wedding gown. But never to be her own. Nor her daughter’s—at least on her wedding.

  How do I know these things, these inconspicuous things that fill the space between the walls? I listen. I listen to everything, their synchronous breathing at night, the whispers hissing like snakes on all floors, the sounds of their dreams, the impact of cat paws against the cool cellar leading to the subterranean catacombs under the city. I listen to the children’s voices echoing and expanding in the tunnel beneath; as if the Minotaur of the cave is blasting fire out of its nostrils. Or the streetcar tooting its horn like a capricious siren each siesta afternoon; and at midnight, the night watchman’s stick striking the cobblestones. Tap, tap, tap. Rap, slap, clap.

  Every night, when the town sank deep into slumber, the distant voice of a woman’s singing seemed to be rising from the depths of the Aegean. “Dandini, dandini, danali bebek. Elleri kollari, kinali bebek.” My little babe, whose arms and hands are hennaed, oh my little babe. She was singing a lullaby to an infant resting in a secret place nearby. Gone mad when her baby died, she’d buried it in a golden cradle, then offered herself to the waves.

  Esma always lay in bed listening to this lullaby, muffled from having to pass through a curtain of fog—itself an apparition. The lullaby stole quietly into her room, wrapping her entirely in its fluid warmth, whispering, “Dandini, dandini, danali bebek.”

  When the boys asked if it was the sirens singing, she told them, “There’s no such thing. I once thought I heard the sirens, too, when I was a child but later, later they disappear. Ignore them; they’re nothing but the spit on the devil’s tongue. Their songs wreck ships and those they lure meet unspeakable deaths. Once, a man named Odysseus tied his men to the mast so the sirens’ voices could not entice them. It was the only way.”

  I listen and peer into their lives—the most private moments when they close their doors and retreat into their private dreams. I even see those dreams. I read their thoughts. Make judgments. Even manipulate situations when I can. I, too, have frailties.

  I look in on the boys asleep in the room they share. And just outside, Gonca, the ageless odalisque with the mustache whose eyebrows meet in the center, the one who dries bat wings for good luck and pulverizes sea horses, sleeps mattressless on the floor—the only way she knows to sleep—and breathes in harmony with the children. After a while, their exhalation takes on colors, continuously dissolving into new shapes and spiraling into a common dreamworld and fall, fall and fly, fly and float.

  Before retiring, Gonca always locks up her sister Ayşe. The moon makes the young girl wild and frenzied. As if in heat, Ayşe stirs like a boa, aroused by her own writhing. Her bed in the night, always drenched, her jasmine vapor always steaming.

  On the third floor, Esma untangles her waist-long hair, her sunken eyes flashing like jewels in the dark, her heart flying, and her mind alert. She parts the curtain, seeing no one. Suddenly, the muezzin’s voice rises like a raptured bird as he begins the midnight prayer. Esma covers her hair, rolls out her prayer rug from Ushak. Stands facing the East, joins her fingertips, and mumbles incomprehensible incantations. She rubs her face slowly, her willowy figure crumbles, her forehead kisses the floor.

  The curtains billow in the wind, the balcony door parts, and wearing a fez and a pelerine, Süleyman arrives like a Valentino sheik. His hawk nose bespeaks of his wild nomadic ancestors who once crossed the Urals and the Altays. He is like a lean mountain gazelle, open chested, his heart pulsing with his smile. Pearl white teeth, searching eyes.

  Quickly, Esma rolls the prayer rug under her bed. Adjusts her hair. Süleyman’s the only man to see her without her veil outside of her family. He removes his fez and bows to her. Then, they sit on the heirloom Louis Quinze couch, to watch the moon, if there is one in the sky. If not, the stars, if it’s a clear night. Their heartbeats harmonize. And their breath.

  Now and then, distracted, they glance at each other instead of the sky. They peer with burning eyes, but hands, hands they restrain. Never to touch, the vow they made, the vow that allows them to come together like this every night. For years. To love like this. Without a blemish.

  He asks her, “Esma, Esma, why w
on’t you become my wife?”

  Esma casts down her eyes. Still in widow’s black.

  “Once there was, once there wasn’t,” she begins with the words that begin all stories. “Once, a nightingale loved a rose. And the rose, aroused by his beautiful song, woke trembling on her stem. She was white, as all roses were in those days. But she had tears of dew.”

  “The nightingale came ever so close and whispered, “I love you, rose,” Süleyman continues where Esma left off, “which made her blush, and instantly pink roses burst out of their buds. Then, the nightingale came closer. Allah meant the rose never to know earthly love but she opened her petals and the nightingale stole the nectar. In the morning, the rose, in her shame, turned red, birthing red roses.”

  “Ever since then, the nightingale visits her nightly to sing of divine love, but the rose refuses, for Allah never meant a flower and a bird to mate. Although she trembles at the song of the nightingale, her petals always remain closed,” she terminates.

  A moment of silence.

  “Three apples have fallen from the sky,” they then recite in unison. “One belongs to the storyteller, one to you, and one to me.”

  And one to the walls that can hear and see all.

  They laugh. This is how all the stories end. Until the dawn prayer, they recite poems and stories to each other like this, to compensate for all they cannot fulfill. No one else will know of their secret world in which love is transcendent and suffering a joy.

  Each time they part Esma gives Süleyman a handkerchief full of something, like the most delectable Turkish delight from Hadji Bekir. Süleyman bows, puts on his fez, and blends into the dusk. Esma unrolls her prayer rug, joins the tips of her fingers together, falls prostrate, an enigmatic smile on her face. In that position she stays, curled like a fava bean, on her prayer pod.