The Oracle of Stamboul

by Michael David Lukas

  I found them by accident. I go up there sometimes when I want to be alone. I am sorry if I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “I understand,” he said. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

  Eleonora glanced at Monsieur Karom, who was standing with his hands behind his back next to the buffet.

  I was up in the corridors. And I saw the Reverend. It was after my lesson and he had stayed on in the library to write down a few of his thoughts. I didn’t mean to be watching him, but when I looked down I saw him going through one of the drawers of the Colonel’s desk.

  The Bey tightened his mouth.

  “Is that all?”

  I can’t be sure, because of the angle, but I think I saw him take something out of the drawer and put it in his briefcase.

  “What was it?” the Bey asked, animated in a way she had never before seen. “A pen, a letter, a piece of paper?”

  Eleonora felt the first tingling pangs of regret in the tips of her toes. She could see a mountain of unintended consequences at her feet, a mountain crumbling beneath her. For a moment, she wanted to take it all back, but she couldn’t. Now that it had been released into the world, she had to tell the Bey everything.

  It looked like a piece of paper. Or maybe a few pieces of paper, a small stack.

  Without another word, the Bey strode down the main hall to the library. Eleonora followed a few steps behind.

  “Which drawer was it?” he said when they arrived, sitting down at the Colonel’s desk. “Do you remember?”

  She pointed at the upper left drawer and the Bey rifled through it. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he removed the drawer’s contents entirely. Placing the papers on the desk, he looked through them one by one. When he reached the bottom of the pile, he let his head sink into his hands.

  “I should never have trusted him,” he said. “The Rector of Robert’s College offering to tutor a young girl.”

  Eleonora stood at the desk while the Bey mumbled into the cave of his arms. She felt a falling sensation, the world disintegrating by her own volition. Suddenly, the Bey looked up and, grasping her by the shoulders, looked hard into her eyes.

  “Are you absolutely sure you saw him take a piece of paper from this drawer?”

  She nodded, avoiding the harsh glow of his eyes.

  “This is a very serious matter. If what you said is true, we cannot have him in the house anymore, under any circumstances. Your lessons will have to end and we will have to cut all ties with him.”

  The Bey paused and released his grip, seeming to collect himself.

  “At the same time, you must take care not to bear false witness. It is, according to Muhammad at least, among the four greatest sins.”

  Yes. I am sure.

  “Then there is only one course we can take.”

  If I may ask, she wrote tentatively. What was the piece of paper?

  The Bey closed his eyes and took a few long breaths before he removed a blank sheet of stationery and a pen from the top drawer of the desk.

  “What the Reverend took was of no great importance,” he said. “What matters is that we cannot trust him.”

  With Eleonora looking over his shoulder, the Bey composed a short letter.

  Dear Reverend James Muehler,

  I regret to inform you that we can no longer continue the lessons between yourself and Miss Eleonora Cohen. Due to circumstances beyond our control, which unfortunately we are not able to discuss, we are forced to terminate the relationship immediately. Miss Cohen has enjoyed your lessons immensely and she wishes you all the best in the future, as do I. We both sincerely hope this decision will not cause you any undue inconvenience or injury.

  Sincerely,

  Moncef Barcous Bey

  The Bey read over the letter and looked to Eleonora for approval before he folded it and placed it in an envelope. Just like that, her lessons were over. She had done the right thing, she knew she had, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right at all. After attempting to read in the library for a few hours, Eleonora ate lunch, wandered back upstairs to her room, and slipped into bed, thinking about General Krzab’s words to his wife on the nature of truth: A slippery fish, flashing scales in the water and a noble fighter on the line, but dull as lead at the bottom of the boat. It was true. As much as she admired the idea of truth from a distance, its practice left something to be desired.

  Eleonora awoke that next morning to the click of the door and the soft music of Mrs. Damakan humming a familiar melody. Her dreams scurried into the far corners of the room, under furniture and into the cracks between the floorboards. Rubbing her eyes, she slipped out of bed and followed Mrs. Damakan to the bathroom. The air was heavy with condensation and the smell of soap. The morning pressed its face to the small window above the sink like a beggar. Eleonora could feel her skin gather into goose bumps as she slipped into the bath. A shiver jumped across her back and she traced an S on the surface of a square blue tile.

  Lifting her arms to the edge of the tub, she leaned her head back and let Mrs. Damakan work her hair into a soapy froth. What she would do now, she had no idea. Without her lessons, the future stretched out like an endless expanse of waves, weeks and months rising and falling in an undifferentiated ocean of time. She didn’t regret what she had done—she had done the right thing—but she mourned the loss of her lessons and feared that perhaps her accusation was false. Perhaps she had imagined the Reverend opening that drawer. Perhaps he was just curious. Relaxing into the motion of the lather, she let her shoulders slump forward and wrapped her arms around her knees. In the murky translucence of the bath, she could see the outlines of her reflection, her flesh scrubbed pink and a tower of soapy white hair as tall as an Austrian cake. She thought of lily pads as she touched her chin to the surface of the water.

  “Eleonora.”

  Mrs. Damakan pronounced her name with care, as if it were an inscription etched into the back of an amulet. Moistening her lips, the handmaid brought her stool around to the front of the tub. Her kerchief was pushed back much farther than normal, revealing a stringy white field of hair woven through with strands of black.

  “You did what was right,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

  How the old handmaid knew what had happened, Eleonora didn’t know. This pronouncement, however, that she had done the right thing, was spoken with such assurance that it washed away her doubts, at least for the time being.

  “You did the right thing,” Mrs. Damakan repeated and Eleonora knew it was true. She had done the right thing.

  After rinsing Eleonora’s hair, the old handmaid stood, pulled the plug, and quickly gathered up her things, leaving Eleonora alone to watch the remains of her bathwater swirl and cough down the drain. She opened her mouth, as if to speak, then caught herself. When the last of the cloudy gray water disappeared, a shiver ran from her shoulders to her knees, and the entire length of her skin bristled.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The termination of Eleonora’s lessons did not change much the structure of her daily routine. She still woke at the same hour, bathed, and went downstairs to breakfast with the Bey. Her afternoons, she still spent primarily in her armchair or at the Colonel’s desk, twisting a strand of hair around her finger as she read. The Bey’s library was large enough to keep her busy for at least a few more years, but without Reverend Muehler behind her, without the constant prodding and pacing of her tutor, she found it difficult to marshal her concentration. As she read, trudging through the annals of ancient history and oration, exhuming the petty rivalries and disputations of centuries past, her thoughts often wandered from the text at hand. Even lighter reading, like the stash of mystery novels she found alongside The Complete Works of Honoré de Balzac, had trouble holding her attention.

  Although the question of Reverend Muehler was, for all intents and purposes, settled, Eleonora returned to it again and again. Gazing at the wallpaper in front of her, she lingered on her memory of the incident
: the open drawer, the Reverend calling her name before he left the room. Her own role in the affair, she knew, was beyond reproach. There was no doubt she had seen the Reverend rummaging through the Colonel’s desk; there was no doubt he had put a piece or a stack of papers in his briefcase; and there was no doubt she had done the right thing in telling the Bey. It was not a complicated situation, she told herself. Reverend Muehler had stolen something and, as a result, the Bey did not want him in the house. Still, something about the matter bothered her. She didn’t understand why the Reverend would want to steal anything from the Bey in the first place, nor why the Bey had reacted so strongly. Perhaps it was the influence of the mystery novels she had been reading; perhaps it was her natural sense of curiosity. Regardless of where it came from, Eleonora could not rid herself of the notion that the matter of Reverend Muehler was connected somehow to that strange young man at the Café Europa, and possibly also to the encrypted note the Reverend had shown her just a few weeks before his dismissal. How they were related, she didn’t know.

  It was during this period, between the termination of her lessons and the end of Ramadan, that the Bey began to propose various excursions around town. If they were discussing Homer, he might mention that the ruins of Troy had recently been discovered less than a day’s ride from Stamboul. If she asked him a question about the architect Sinan, he might praise the interior of Sultan Ahmed Mosque. More than once he mentioned the wonderful view of the city from the top of Rumelihisari, adding that it was by far the best picnic spot in Stamboul. Not wanting to pressure her into anything, however, Moncef Bey never suggested any of these excursions outright, and Eleonora never outright rejected them. Hinting and demurring, they returned again and again to the same positions, like a king and rook in eternal check. The Bey praised the beauty of the day and Eleonora nodded, her thoughts elsewhere.

  One afternoon, toward the end of the month of Ramadan, Eleonora was sitting at the Colonel’s desk in the library, reading Aristophanes. It had rained the night before, a short summer thunderstorm. As a consequence of this, Mrs. Damakan had pushed the curtains open and a late-afternoon light suffused the room, giving the furniture and the pages of her book a melancholy tint they weren’t accustomed to.

  What cares have not gnawed at my heart? And how few have been the pleasures in my life! Four, to be exact, while my troubles have been as countless as the grains of sand on the shore!

  Eleonora exhaled and looked up at the stretch of wallpaper in front of her. It was the same design as always, a dark red paisley with gold stripes. As she stared, however, she noticed for the first time that a battery of tiny gold swords was scattered throughout the paisley. She leaned her chair back on two legs, so as to better observe the expanse of wallpaper, and her knee grazed the side of the desk. She looked down and her eyes came to rest on the curved brass handle of the left drawer. Rubbing her knee, Eleonora wondered, as she often did, what the Reverend had been looking for and whether he had found it. That afternoon, for reasons she could not explain even to herself, she did more than wonder. Scooting her chair back from the desk, she looped two fingers through the handle of the drawer and pulled. She had expected it to be locked, but it gave easily, and there, like a nest of birds hidden at the back of a clerestory, was a stack of letters tied neatly with a string.

  Glancing at the door to the hallway, she unloosed the string and peeled off the top letter. It was a thick, square envelope, an invitation addressed to Mr. Moncef Barcous. The return address was embossed on the back flap: American Consulate, Beyoglu. Underneath these words was a picture of an eagle with the world in its talons. She lifted the flap and, pushing together the edges of the envelope, let the invitation slip out. The presence of the bearer is requested at a costume ball at the American Consulate. At the bottom of the invitation was a date in October of 1883, almost two years previous. Laying the invitation aside, Eleonora lifted out the entire stack of letters. It was a hodgepodge of personal correspondence, a few invitations, and two pieces of what appeared to be official communication from the palace, nothing of particular interest. She was on the verge of going back to Aristophanes, when she found, at the bottom of the pile, a letter quite unlike the rest.

  Covered with oily fingerprints and dust, it gave off an air of provinciality. There was no stamp or return address, and the only clue as to its destination were the words Moncef Barcous Bey, care of Mrs. Damakan. Eleonora held the letter to her nose and inhaled the remnant of a familiar smell, a country road buried somewhere deep in her memory. This was clearly not what the Reverend had been looking for, but its smell struck a chord inside her, as did the small, uncertain hand on the front of the envelope. Replacing the rest of the stack, she closed the drawer, sat up straight, and pulled her chair closer to the desk. She slipped the letter out of its envelope and let it fall onto the blotter. It was yellow at the edges and folded into a square, two sheets covered front and back with an anxious scrawl.

  “Miss Cohen.”

  Before he said her name, Eleonora heard Moncef Bey clear his throat. And in the shape of that sound she knew immediately that he had been watching her for some time. He crossed the room and leaned against the edge of the Colonel’s desk. He saw the letter. He was looking at it directly. Beyond his gaze, however, he did not acknowledge its presence.

  “What is that you are reading?” he asked, motioning toward the book.

  She turned the spine to face him.

  “Aristophanes,” he read.

  In the absence of anything else to do with her hands, she straightened the book and moved it to the middle of the desk.

  “I have been thinking,” said the Bey, “that it would be nice to take a trip to Rumelihisari.”

  Eleonora nodded, unsure where he was going with this line of conversation but glad it had nothing to do with the letter on the blotter.

  “The wildflowers are blooming,” he continued. “I have no other appointments this afternoon. It’s a short ride and we could bring a picnic dinner with us.”

  Eleonora glanced about the library, with its stuffy red velvet curtains, its globes, its carpets, and shelves upon shelves of books. How many hours had she spent in this room? How many pages had she read? The Bey clearly wanted very much to go with her to Rumelihisari. She owed him that at least, didn’t she?

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Would you like to go to Rumelihisari today?”

  Yes. A picnic would be nice.

  She replaced the Aristophanes book on its shelf, and within the hour they were off, riding along the western shore of the Bosporus toward the narrow mouth of the straits. It was indeed a glorious day. The late-afternoon sun was waning, a brown-and-white rabbit hopped alongside the road, and, with her face to the latticework, Eleonora could see flashes of her flock overhead. As the Bey had promised, the ride was rather short.

  “This,” he said as they rumbled to a stop, “is Rumelihisari. It was from this tower, more than four hundred years ago, that Fatih Sultan Mehmet laid siege to Stamboul and took the city from the Byzantines.”

  A squat stone tower rising rather haphazardly from a pile of rubble and grass, Rumelihisari did not at first glance seem like much of anything. As they disembarked, paid the guard, and climbed the curving steps to its crenellated crown, however, Eleonora saw that the tower itself did not matter. What gave Rumelihisari its significance was its position at the mouth of the Bosporus, and the vantage point such a location afforded. At that time of year, the watch of Rumelihisari was blanketed with light blue wildflowers, and tufts of grass sprouted up through cracks in the stone. The heat of the day had dissipated and a shallow breeze blew in from the sea. As the Bey arranged their picnic—cold meat, bread, cheese, and olives—hoopoes swept down from the minaret of a neighborhood mosque and stretched across the straits. A swath of purple against a bright orange sky, it contracted, then expanded, like an ethereal lung. She wasn’t sure what it was trying to say, but Eleonora had the distinct sense that her flock was speaking to her. After a fe
w passes across the water, the birds dispersed into a grove of pine trees behind Üsküdar.

  Eleonora inhaled and let the city wash over her. Instead of the framed and lifeless landscape she saw from her bay window, this city was alive, teeming with people, with shouting, music, and the smell of baking bread. There was the turtle dome of the New Mosque, the needle minarets of Sultan Ahmed. There was the Bey’s yellow-and-white house. And there, at the confluence of the waters, was the Sultan’s palace, the jewel at the tip of the Golden Horn, with its gleaming white marble walls, crystalline towers, and gardens of wisteria. She bit the inside of her cheek as the last breath of the sun held itself just above the curve of the hill and painted the walls of the palace pale orange fading into pink. As the last light of the sun disappeared, a cannon shot rang out from across the water.

  “A number of years ago,” said the Bey as he motioned for her to sit down and partake of the picnic, “I was given the honor of visiting the palace.”

  He prepared a plate for her and handed it across the picnic blanket.

  “You may know that, though, after the letters you read today.”

  He paused and placed an olive in his mouth.

  “When I first offered to take you in, Miss Cohen, I can’t say I was motivated by anything more than duty, and my fidelity to the memory of your father. The past months, however, while difficult in many ways, have proven to be some of the most gratifying this old bachelor can remember. Which is to say,” he continued, “I don’t at all appreciate you looking through my correspondence, but I understand the impulse. I understand you might have a number of questions about the letters and the matter with Reverend Muehler. Before you ask them, however, I would like to try to explain my end of things as best I can.”

  He took a bite of the sandwich he had made for himself and swallowed.